SSTI Digest

Opportunities for successful workforce development partnerships exist across a variety of industries and geographies, according to a recently released report from the Community Development Department at the Cleveland Fed.  The report, Addressing Employment Needs through Sector Partnerships, includes five case studies from throughout the Federal Reserve’s Fourth District, which contains Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Kentucky, the panhandle of West Virginia and all of Ohio. Although sector-based initiatives have been around for quite some time, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, whose final regulations became publicly available in June 2016, places a strong emphasis on aligning education and job training with employer needs, according to the report’s authors Kyle Fee, Matt Klesta, and Lisa Nelson.

Startup activity in the United States has increased for the second straight year after declining throughout the Great Recession and the years that followed, according to a newly updated index from the Kauffman Foundation. The metropolitan areas with the highest levels in 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity are Austin, Miami, and Los Angeles. Among large states, the most startup activity according to the 2016 index were in Texas, Florida, and California, while Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming had the highest levels among smaller states.

The 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity is comprised of three equally weighted proxies:

A popular development strategy at the state and regional level, incubators seek to support economic growth by providing entrepreneurs with business assistance, access to capital, and networking. As of 2012, approximately one-third of the 1,250 business incubators in the United States were connected with universities, up from one-fifth in 2006, according to International (formerly National) Business Incubation Association data featured in The New York Times. Despite the proliferation of these programs at universities, there have been relatively few conclusions to date on the impacts of these incubators beyond anecdotes. Recent research from faculty at the University of Central Florida (UCF), however, finds evidence that firms in university incubators experience positive growth in number of employees and sales at a statistically significant rate compared to non-university incubated firms.

The big data technology and services market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 23.1 percent over the 2014-2019 forecast period, with annual spending projected to reach$48.6 billion in 2019, according to a 2015 study from IDC – a market research firm. Hoping to leverage this exponential growth into research and economic development opportunity, several universities are fund raising to establish new big data R&D Centers in the communities they serve. The results are mixed so far: while big data center projects at universities in Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Nevada are seeing significant progress, the University of Akron’s proposed Center for Data Science, Analytics and Information Technology will be shuttering its doors before it ever opened.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is entertaining proposals to support “academe-industry partnerships, which are led by an interdisciplinary academic research team collaborating with at least one industry partner in order to carry out research to advance, adapt, and integrate technology(ies) into a specified, human-centered smart service system.” Through the Building Innovation Capacity (BIC) element of the Partnerships for Innovation program, NSF intends to make up to $10 million in grants to support research partnerships working on projects that operate in the post-fundamental or translational stage of development with a “clear path to commercialization.” For this program, NSF requires letters of intent by December 2. Read the opportunity..

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As policymakers and economic developers grow to recognize the need to create broader opportunities for prosperity to sustain future national competitiveness, four facts reveal one of the complex and compounding factors hampering productive participation from a significant segment of our population:  

In the last five years, federal agencies have undertaken 116 price competitions and challenges that have helped the agencies “spur innovation, engage citizen solvers, address tough problems, and advance their core missions” as well as provide a cost savings for the agencies, according to a new report the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released on August 10. The report highlights several trends that have emerged over the last five years, including:

Since the beginning of July, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) has announced almost $7.3 million in grants to support advanced manufacturing and support workforce development efforts in communities impacted by the decline coal industry. In Florida and Washington, the EDA announced funding to support the facilities that can house local manufacturing firms and provide the space and equipment necessary for them to create jobs. In New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, the EDA accessed funding made available through EDA's Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) and Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) initiative to support workforce development efforts that address job losses due to the decline of coal industries in those states.

Florida

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) plan that would allow municipalities to build their own broadband network – superseding state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that explicitly prohibit such projects. The FCC claimed that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 granted it implicit power to preempt state laws that are intended to support open markets for private-sector utility companies. In Wilson, NC, and Chattanooga, TN, the municipalities intended to “use the FCC’s now-overturned power to build or extend their networks in direct competition with existing broadband providers,” according to GovTech.

To help the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) prepares its next five-year research strategic plan, FTA invites stakeholders from across the country to participate in the crafting of the plan by providing ideas and other comments to establish a framework to guide how the federal entity prioritizes and invests in research activities over the next several years. Stakeholders are encouraged to visit FTA’s online dialogue to post an idea; review, comment, and vote on others’ input; and, provide specific feedback to FTA’s questions.  

On July 25, the Small Business Administration (SBA) released a framework that allows qualifying small and disadvantaged businesses to obtain developmental assistance from mentor companies (both large and small businesses) and form joint ventures with those mentors to pursue government contracts. The new small business mentor-protégé program allows mentors to provide technical/management assistance, financial assistance, trade education and/or assistance in performing prime contracts with federal agencies through joint venture arrangements for up to three years. Under the rules of the program, mentors may own up to 40 percent of the protégé. Mentors may have up to three protégés under the new program. Read the final rules…

A recent National Institutes of Health-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences identifies how “science literacy” has been defined in research and the role this construct plays in attitudes about scientific research and funding. The 138-page report finds that science literacy has been measured many different ways but that the concept does not seem to directly affect attitudes toward science generally or in specific subjects.