SSTI Digest

Scott Doron has been promoted to director for the Southern Technology Council, the advisory council on innovation and technology policy issues for the Southern Growth Policies Board.

Robert McMahan has been named North Carolina's Science Advisor. In addition to advising the Governor on science and technology matters, McMahan will oversee the support staff for the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology. The advisor position will report to the secretary of the Department of Commerce.

Gwyn Riddick recently was named director of the new Piedmont Triad office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

North Carolina took another step toward improving technology-based economic opportunity for its citizens when Gov. Michael Easley signed into law House Bill 1194 earlier this month. The bill creates the e-NC Authority, which will continue the work of the existing Rural Internet Access Authority for three more years, beginning January 2004. Since 2001, the current authority has led efforts to connect North Carolina, especially rural areas, to the Internet. The Rural Internet Access Authority estimates 2002 – a year when the authority helped drive a 20 percent increase in computer ownership – marked the biggest deployment year the state has ever had. High-speed Internet access was available to 75 percent of North Carolina households by the end of 2002, the authority states. The e-NC Authority will be a unique hybrid organization that is funded through private and federal dollars and operated out of a private nonprofit. The newly created state authority will build off the existing authority's work, safeguard its financial and programmatic investments across the state, provide continued…

More workers in North Carolina will be trained for jobs in biotechnology, thanks to the Golden LEAF Foundation's recent $60 million commitment to the emerging industry. In all, $64.5 million is going toward a training initiative, with North Carolina's biotech industry expected to contribute $4.5 million. Golden LEAF (Long-term Economic Advancement Foundation), created in 1999 as a nonprofit corporation, receives one-half of the funds coming to North Carolina from its settlement with tobacco companies. The Foundation's mission is to help the state transition out of a tobacco-based economy while creating new jobs in tobacco-dependent areas. As part of the biotech initiative, North Carolina State University in Raleigh will receive $36 million to build and equip a center to train workers. North Carolina Central University in Durham will receive $19.1 million to establish graduate and undergraduate degree programs in biotechnology. The remaining $9.4 million will go to the State Community College System to implement training programs in local communities, serving as a feeder system to NC State and North…

After months of analyzing data and hundreds of interviews, organizers of western North Carolina's Future Forward economic development strategy only await the study's approval by local governments. Future Forward is aimed at improving economic development conditions for 12 counties in the Western Piedmont and Mountains of North Carolina located in the 10th and 11th Congressional Districts — Alexander, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Iredell, Lincoln, Rutherford, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes and McDowell counties. Specifically requiring approval are the study's final recommendations, which fall into three broad categories: Education and Workforce Training. The study proposes that the western North Carolina region conduct a campaign to increase the value people place on education and increase the number of people with education beyond high school; establish a Learning and Innovation Network that provides programs and facilities to build technology-based economic development (TBED) across the region; and, promote development of a technology park associated with the Learning and Innovation Network…

Larry Moolenaar is the new Executive Director of the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments.

Two of SSTI's sister organizations for promoting technology-based economic development (TBED) had items of potential interest to the readers of the SSTI Weekly Digest in their e-newsletters this week. The highlights below include links for more information. Broadband The April 1 issue of the Southern Compass, the electronic newsletter of the Southern Growth Policies Board, alerted SSTI to A Broadband World: The Promise of Advanced Services. The paper, written by Matthew Benett of the Alliance for Public Technology (APT), provides case studies of the successful incorporation of broadband applications for local and regional public service delivery. The report is available at: http://apt.org/confer/broadband-world.pdf  Free email subscriptions to the Southern Compass and back issues can be obtained at: http://www.southern.org/compass/index.asp Entrepreneurship The March 31 issue of E-News, the bi-weekly newsletter from the National Commission on Entrepreneurship, included several brief items of note: Entrepreneur magazine's rankings of the top…

The Southern Growth Policies Board has released a toolkit to help communities understand the knowledge economy and how new economic forces affect quality of life and economic development. Seeing the Future: The Knowledge Economy seeks to inform people about the knowledge, skills and resources needed to compete in today’s economy. Seeing the Future is designed to stimulate discussion among community groups of any size or background — from economic development councils to public officials and city planners to civic and service clubs — by providing information on how technology and innovation, globalization, the workforce and community affect economic development. The toolkit contains a moderator’s script; a video that introduces the basic principles of the knowledge economy; interactive exercises to stimulate critical thinking and community planning; comprehensive resource materials such as briefing books on globalization, technology and innovation, the workforce and community; ideas for taking action; real-world success stories; and sources for further research. Produced with financial…

A new strategic plan focusing on the North Carolina Department of Commerce's four cornerstones of economic development success – a globally competitive workforce, investment in science and technology, a competitive business climate, and attractive communities prepared for economic development – has been released by the state's Economic Development Board. We Are Changing the Way We Do Business seeks to flesh out Governor Mike Easley's vision "One North Carolina," which supports creating high quality jobs. The plan is the result of the 37-member board's effort to examine over a period of 10 months key policy areas affecting the state. Public comment was invited, and each board member served on one of seven committees that addressed such areas as recruitment and retention. In the end, the board stressed improving the state's competitiveness; promoting regionalism with clear, central leadership; cultivating collaborative relationships; and responding to the urgency of North Carolina's unemployment rate, which is fourth highest in the U.S. Seven long-term goals also were named, including:…

A new report, Just Clusters: Economic Development Strategies that Reach More People and Places, from Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS) finds that while cluster-based economic development strategies have the potential to expand opportunities for disadvantaged populations and rural regions, most current cluster strategies do not pay attention to equity issues. The project was made possible through a grant from the Ford Foundation. Just Clusters stems from a question put to almost two dozen leading cluster experts: “Are clusters equitable and just tools for economic development or do they skew resources to those who are already better off?” Clusters refer to the competitive advantages that firms acquire when there are significant concentrations of other similar or related and interdependent businesses in a geographic region. The collaborative result of a two-day meeting of 23 practitioners, researchers and policy makers, the report looks at the implications of cluster strategies for low- and middle- income people, economically distressed urban and rural places, and small enterprises…

Biotechnology has enormous potential for North Carolina's future, but the state's economic development strategy must be broader than any single industry and must include growth-from-within strategies, concludes a report published by the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University. The institute, a public policy initiative of NC State, is an outgrowth of the college's annual Emerging Issues Forum. Biotechnology and Humanity at the Crossroads of a New Era stems from the 2002 Forum, a panel discussion that resulted in five policy recommendations for North Carolina: Review all science- and technology-driven efforts to spur economic development, strengthening growth-from-within strategies; Increase support for science classes in grades K-12, biomanufacturing at community colleges, and investment in research universities; Develop new ways to boost technology transfer and commercialization; Implement a statewide strategy for the state's colleges and universities to contribute to regional economic development; and, Encourage greater public debate…