SSTI Digest

As a way to help encourage innovation and workforce development in Northern Indiana, a five-year, $42.4 million grant from the Lilly Endowment will support the Labs for Industry Futures and Transformation (LIFT) Network. An effort of the University of Notre Dame and the South Bend – Elkhart Regional Partnership, the LIFT Network will launch iNDustry Labs at Notre Dame’s Innovation Park, a burgeoning innovation district on the campus’ southern end. This is the sixth region in Indiana where the Lilly Endowment has made an economic development commitment.

The program will “serve as a front door to the University for industry partners and others in the LIFT Network to more effectively connect industry and community partners with faculty expertise, students, research capabilities and the university’s entrepreneurship and technology innovation hub,” according to a press release.

Describing the 125+ page document outlining the administration’s thoughts regarding the movement of federal R&D into market use as a “discussion guide, not a policy document,”  Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter Copan announced the report’s release April 24 during the early minutes of the national convening of one of the communities most directly affected by any changes likely to result from the document: the technology licensing practitioners and offices which make up the Federal Laboratories Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). 

While there are no funding proposals contained within the paper, there are many specific recommendations and examples of policy leading language included in the culminating report from the multi-staged information-gathering phase of the high-profile “Return on Investment” initiative jointly led by NIST and the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). 

Last week, U.S. Air Force secretary Heather Wilson released a new Science and Technology Strategy outlining three broad areas for realignment within the branch. The secretary’s emphasis on transformational partnerships should be particularly noteworthy for non-defense organization working with new technologies or STEM workforce. The strategy outlines three objectives: improving delivery of transformational capabilities, reforming S&T management, and likely to be of most interest to the tech-based economic development community, expanding the S&T enterprise with a particular focus on workforce and facilitating innovation partnerships.

We’re sad to report that in the last month, three individuals who helped shape the field of tech-based economic development have passed away. Bruce “Tab” Wilkins was most recently the President and Center Director of Impact Washington. In addition to five years with the Washington Technology Center, the majority of his career was spent with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) network, going back to 1994 when he helped form and then lead CONNSTEP. His calm, gracious presence is missed by all those including the SSTI team who had the good fortune to work with him.

Among David Hamburg’s many accomplishments was serving as the President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1982 to 1997. During his tenure the Carnegie Commission on Science and Technology operated and SSTI received a grant critical to the launch of its operations. A full profile of Dr. Hamburg can be found here. 

In the late 1980s, Ed Cohen served as founding executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, an agency spun out of the higher education department during the first term of Gov. Thomas Kean, with support from the state’s key business leaders.  Under Ed’s leadership, the Commission became one of the premier state tech-based economic development organizations that kicked off the wave of state involvement in encouraging economic growth through science and technology. A complete obituary can be found here and is listed below.

Earth Day has evolved from environmental consciousness raising in its beginnings in the early 1970s to this year’s celebration surrounded with climate change concerns and development of the clean energy industry..  A recent report from the Brookings Institution shows more discussion needs to happen around the types of workers, activities and skills that will be needed in the clean energy industry, and how those efforts can be more inclusive. Transitioning to a clean energy economy will involve 320 unique occupations spread across clean energy production, energy efficiency and environmental management, the authors found. The report highlights the fact that those workers earn higher and more equitable wages compared to all workers nationally, and many of those occupations tend to have lower educational requirements.

As a bedrock of American innovation, universities and federal laboratories research and develop new products that help drive economic growth. A new study from the Economic Growth Institute at the University of Michigan aims to improve national competitiveness in this arena by providing a roadmap for universities that includes best practices on translating research from the lab to the marketplace.

U-M researchers interviewed and surveyed representatives at 59 Innovation and Economic Prosperity (IEP) universities designated by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), and identified the following best practices for technology commercialization:

The sustainability of Manufacturing USA institutes depends on their ability to offer value across a wide range of stakeholders according to a recent report by The National Academies of Sciences’ National Materials and Manufacturing Board, on behalf of The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Defense. Since 2012, DoD has invested more than $600 million in its Manufacturing USA institutes, with funding intended to help cover startup costs and the first five to seven years of operations. As these institutes begin to reach year five, DoD seeks to evaluate how its institutes are achieving their goals, the best ongoing role for the federal government, and potential long-term funding options. The findings of this study are unveiled in the Strategic Long-Term Participation by DoD in Its Manufacturing USA Institutes.

New research from Congress’ Joint Economic Committee’s Social Capital Project finds that the migration of highly-educated adults toward dynamic states and major metropolitan areas is accentuating America’s geographic divisions. Using census data from 1940 to the present, the authors define “brain drain” as someone in the top third of the national education distribution who resides in a state other than their state of birth between the ages of 31 and 40. Their interactive, data-rich analysis finds that the states that are doing the best cluster around the Boston-Washington corridor and on the west coast, while states in the South and the Midwest/Great Lakes fare worse when it comes to attracting and retaining the highly educated. The authors also analyze changes in states and regions over time, as well as conclusions for what this means for social capital nationwide.

The Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai outlined two new initiatives aimed at ensuring U.S. leadership in 5G and continuing efforts to close the digital divide. Pai announced his intent to create the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which he indicated would inject $20.4 billion into high-speed broadband networks in rural American over the next decade. The FCC said the fund represents the FCC’s biggest step to close the digital divide and should connect up to 4 million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks. However, Route Fifty has reported that the fund is a rebranding of the current Connect America Fund, albeit with higher speeds and more money.

The FCC will draft a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the fund, which the commission will vote on, followed by a public comment period before the commission votes on final rules.

The IRS released its long-anticipated second tranche of rules on Wednesday, and the regulations provide some clarity around using Opportunity Zones to invest in businesses. Specific examples include details on defining a business’ operations within a zone and funds’ ability to reinvest proceeds. However, further clarification is needed, including around investors’ treatment of interim sales, and additional changes are forthcoming. A partial summary of the 169 pages of new rules follows, and SSTI will provide additional updates as the full implications become clearer.

SSTI’s letter to the Treasury on the first set of rules emphasized three areas that required clarity, and the new rules take steps toward all three items.

1.    Safe harbor for initial investments by Qualified Opportunity Funds (QOFs)

State funding for higher education has only halfway recovered in the 10 years since the Great Recession, according to a recent State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report. The report also found that while higher education funding is stabilizing, the shift to greater reliance on tuition as a revenue source has leveled off, but remains higher than since before the Great Recession. During the Great Recession, appropriations dropped 24.4 percent from the high in 2008 ($8,848 per full-time equivalent enrollment) to $4,489 in 2012 due to enrollment growth without a proportional funding increase. That trend reversed in 2013 as appropriations increased for five straight years, but have remained flat from 2017 to 2018.

As the technology behind renewable energy continues to advance, recent research finds that the public sector plays an important role in catalyzing innovation. This can be seen in three main ways: by funding basic research on renewable energy in all 50 states; by partnering with cleantech startups; and by supporting cleantech clusters through networks, commercialization assistance, and access to capital. Taken together, this recent research suggests that public-sector partnerships can complement industry’s role in growing the green economy at the federal, state and local levels.