SSTI Digest

Manufacturing USA recently released its 2018 annual report highlighting the progress its 14 associated institutes have made in growing the Manufacturing USA network, increasing manufacturing technology development and technology transfer, and promoting workforce development.

Ensuring the participation of industry in the program is essential to strengthening supply chains and promoting innovation in manufacturing. According to the report, the network grew its membership by 50 percent to 1,937 organizations, of which 63 percent are industrial groups. Of these industry members, 70 percent are small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. The report also notes that in an effort to accelerate the adoption of innovative manufacturing technologies, institute-led research and development projects increased by 74 percent to 476 projects.

The U.S. Senate advanced multiple FY 2020 bills through the appropriations committee in the past week, including the budgets for EDA, NIST, SBA, and NSF. Among the highlights include $31 million for the Regional Innovation program at EDA, a robust increase over FY 2019’s $23.5 million. While the Senate continues to work through this appropriations process, the chamber is also considering a resolution to continue funding the government from the end of the current fiscal year, Sept. 30, through Nov. 21.

Additional details on the bills passed today are forthcoming. In the meantime, the following appropriations are available publicly:

SBA’s 2019 Growth Accelerators Fund Competition winners were announced yesterday, awarding $50,000 to each of 60 organizations across the country. Special congratulations to the SSTI members, including BioSTL (BioGenerator), TechTown Detroit, Startup Junkie Foundation (Fuel), Invest Nebraska, Launch Tennessee, Innovation Works, Arrowhead Center (Sprints), and University of Illinois (EnterpriseWorks). The competition is for programs with 60 percent of funded work dedicated to supporting women, socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, and entrepreneurs in states with relatively few SBIR/STTR awards or in Opportunity Zones. SSTI held a webinar when the 2019 competition launched and will announce the 2020 round, when available, through the member-exclusive Funding Supplement.

SSTI’s Annual Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, held September 9-11, showcased successful programs, addressed challenges and examined trends and new developments across the innovation economy. We always like to welcome back old friends and are encouraged to see new faces. Said one long-time attendee, “I used to say this is the place to network with the most experienced and sophisticated practitioners. I’m pleased to see the blend of young people coming now, so I would say that SSTI brings together the young and seasoned for very effective conversation and exchange of ideas.”

We’d like to thank all those who attended, spoke, headlined and sponsored the conference. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we highlight some of those issues that were raised during discussions and sessions while we continue to bring you news and analysis of factors affecting technology-based economic development.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently provided funding to establish the Anchor Learning Network, a three-year, joint project of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities and The Democracy Collaborative as a means of sharing successful practices and lessons learned among the 31 member higher education institutions in their efforts to increase their local economic impact.  The partner institutions commit to participating in educational conferences and webinars to share experiences among member institutions and to maintain metrics regarding their community impact performance on a range of activities – hiring, purchasing, supplier diversity, affordable housing, community investing, workforce development, and small business and innovation centers. 

As the month of September marks national Workforce Development Month, states around the country continue to forge ahead with programs and initiatives to help train the workforce and attract more workers to open positions. This article highlights two new reports out that detail state efforts in various workforce programs, as well as calling out several new or proposed programs in Ohio, Vermont and Arizona that are designed to increase and develop the workforce in each of those states.

Each year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) produces a memo to direct the administration’s R&D priorities. The office recently released its first such directive under its new director, Kelvin Droegemeier, who was appointed to the position under President Donald Trump. As described by Science, this year’s description of priority research areas “hews closely” to the administration’s prior directives. The section addressing actions to affect federal R&D, however, places less emphasis on technology transfer than in other statements by this administration. 

NSF is issuing its first set of awards from the Convergence Accelerator Pilot. The new program is intended to accelerate use-inspired, convergence research in areas of national importance through partnerships between academic and non-academic stakeholders. The Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel) pilot program focuses on two of the NSF’s “10 Big Ideas” and emphasizes the importance of deliverable-oriented, multidisciplinary teams.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced 24 grants to organizations working to increase SBIR/STTR awards and commercialization outcomes in their states. The Federal and State Technology Partnership program (FAST) emphasizes initiatives focusing on underrepresented regions and entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to the SSTI members receiving FAST awards in the 2019 cycle:

Arrowhead Center @ New Mexico State University Hawaii Technology Development Corporation Launch Tennessee Maryland Technology Development Corporation TechConnect West Virginia University of Missouri University of Nevada, Reno VertueLab

Several of these organizations provided additional information on the goals for their newly-funded initiatives:

A trio of reports from the U.S. Department of Energy showed a continued upward trend in wind energy capacity and employment in 2018, as the cost per megawatt (MW) continued to drop due to larger and more efficient turbines. However, the possible elimination of federal tax incentives could slow the long-term growth of wind power, the report cautioned.

The 2018 Wind Markets Report found that, overall, an additional 7,588 MW of new capacity were added during the year, spurred by $11 billion in investments. “Wind power represented the third-largest source of U.S. electric-generating capacity additions in 2018, behind solar and natural gas,” according to the report.

Overall, wind power contributed 6.5 percent of the country’s electricity supply in 2018, more than 10 percent of the electricity total in 14 states, and more than 30 percent in three of these 14 states (Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma).

A growing number of Republicans have a negative view of higher education, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The survey found that, overall, half of all the adults in this country have a positive attitude toward higher education, down from 55 percent in 2017 and 63 percent in 2016. The number of adults with a negative view now stands at 38 percent, up from 36 percent in the 2017 Pew survey and 28 percent in 2016.

The increase in negative perceptions is due to a change in attitude among Republicans and independents who lean Republican. Of this group, 59 percent had a negative perception of higher education in 2019, up from 58 percent in 2017 and 37 percent in 2015.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has announced the winners of a $1 million competition designed to help makerspaces train the future workforce, focusing on addressing the job skills and placement gap faced by U.S. businesses. The 12 winners of the Makerspace Training, Collaboration and Hiring (MaTCH) Pilot Competition, will reap $1 million total in prize money across three tiers. Seed grants of up to $25,000 will be awarded to seed small workforce development programs, Proof of Principle grants of up to $100,000 will be awarded to grow programs with a proven history of training and/or workforce development, and Scale grants of up to $200,000 will be awarded for capacity building of successful existing programs with a strong history of training and/or workforce development, with graduated participants in at least two training cycles.