SSTI Digest

The North Carolina Board of Science and Technology, for a long time serving mostly in an advisory capacity to Gov. Mike Easley, increasingly is more involved in the direct delivery of technology-based economic development programs. The latest addition to its growing portfolio of programs is a $1 million Green Business Fund to help small businesses commercialize promising green and alternative energy technologies.   Under the new program, the Board will provide grants of up to $100,000 to North Carolina-based small businesses with 100 or fewer employees. The award process will be competitive, with priority given to proposals that aid in the following:

New Mexico’s 2008 legislative session wrapped up last week, resulting in no final action on several TBED-related bills and leading Gov. Bill Richardson to call a special legislative session to address his health care reform agenda.   Gov. Richardson signed the General Appropriations Act of 2009 and the Junior Budget Bill with minimal vetoes but vetoed a Capital Outlay package, which included $2 million to the board of regents of Northern New Mexico for a proposed solar energy research park ($1 million less than requested) and $3.5 million for clean energy grants to public entities for innovative energy projects within the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. The legislature passed the capital bill again, giving the governor until March 5 to approve it with individual line-item vetoes, if he deems necessary.  

Research-based companies draw much of their advantage in the market from their investment in technology development and the knowledge capital they have accumulated over time. Since this knowledge represents potential revenue, many companies jealously guard their intellectual property (IP) with non-compete clauses and other legal contracts with their employees. No company, however, can completely stop the outward flow of information. One of the most important means by which information can escape is through the movement of employees from one job to another. Reputations for Toughness in Patent Enforcement: Implications for Knowledge Spillovers via Inventor Mobility, a recent paper by Rajshree Agarwal, Martin Ganco and Rosemarie Ziedonis, states that a company’s reputation for intellectual property enforcement can significantly reduce the value lost through employee movement.  

A consistent claim in many competitiveness reports and economic development strategies is the need to increase the number of scientists and engineers in a given geographic area. But are there other factors, when coupled with the presence of scientists and engineers, that influence local long-term employment growth more than others?   A recent paper from Desmond Beckstead, W. Mark Brown and Guy Gellatly explores this question and examines the factors that influence the number of scientists and engineers in cities. In Cities and Growth: The Left Brain of North American Cities: Scientists and Engineers and Urban Growth, Beckstead et al. find that cities concentrated with diverse mixtures of people with degrees, combined with science and engineering employment, experience the highest rates of long-term employment growth.  

Using its Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the number of employees in about 800 separate occupations for every metropolitan area in the U.S. In the most recent version of its Science and Engineering Indicators series, the National Science Board compiled a chart organizing the number of employees in S&E occupations in 2006, the most recent data available. As a whole, science and engineering occupations include all varieties of engineers, as well as scientists from the computer, mathematical, life, physical and social sciences.   SSTI has prepared a table showing the number of S&E employees and the percent of employees in S&E occupations for the 100 U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest number of employed people. For the U.S. as a whole, in 2006, just over 5.4 million had jobs in S&E occupations, which represents 4.1 percent of the working population. In the table, the metropolitan areas are organized by the size of their total employee base.  

A complete description of this opportunity and others is available at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. The University of Toledo is seeking someone to serve as director of the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio (UCEAO) in the university's Department of Research. The director will be an experienced administrator who will serve as a major spokesperson in Ohio on advanced energy and who can move UCEAO from its present developmental stage to a robust organization that will provide leadership statewide. The incumbent will have significant professional experience in an energy-related field, as well as significant relevant administrative, leadership, and management experience. A bachelor's degree is required; an advanced degree or a Ph.D. is preferred.

Responding to a statewide economic downturn, Gov. Ted Strickland announced two major TBED initiatives, injecting more than $1 billion into job creation and offering a free year of tuition at Ohio public universities for high school seniors.   During his State of the State Address last week, Gov. Strickland outlined his Building Ohio Jobs proposal, a $1.7 billion stimulus package focusing on the creation of high-quality jobs in the fields of renewable energy and biomedicine. The plan would be financed through bonds, which requires legislative approval. Gov. Strickland asked lawmakers to put the initiative on the ballot for a fall vote, and if approved, funds would be allocated starting next year across the following sectors: $250 million in the advanced and renewable energy economy, including solar, wind and clean coal;

Gov. Jennifer Granholm unveiled her fiscal year 2009 budget last week, proposing to refinance a portion of the state’s general obligation and taxable tobacco bonds and reduce spending across nearly all state departments in order to finance new proposals without raising taxes.   In addition to the proposed use of $150 million in pension funds for Invest Michigan! (see related article in this issue), Gov. Granholm outlined several other TBED-focused during her State of the State Address (see the Jan. 30, 2008 issue of the Digest). One of those initiatives – the Michigan Job Creation Incentive – would be paid for by capitalizing on the sale of state bonds. Under the proposal, new businesses in the top 50 growing sectors are not required to pay any taxes the first year of the tax cut, and existing top 50 growth-sector businesses will get a triple tax credit on their Michigan Business tax.   To support the alternative energy industry throughout the state, Gov. Granholm recommends:

The fifth installment of the Tech Talkin’ Gov’s series includes highlights from State of the State Addresses delivered in Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota and Wyoming.   Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, State of the State Address, Feb. 6, 2008 “We can and must accelerate the growth of broadband service, especially to the rural areas of our state. And so tonight I am announcing the Alabama Internet Initiative with a goal of ensuring that every home and every business in our state has high-speed Internet access and will have it within the next four years.”   Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, State of the State Address, Feb. 6, 2008

One of the continuing challenges for TBED organizations is successfully documenting how their investments and activities influence the economic landscape of their states and regions. SSTI has selected a few recent state reports as examples of impact assessment, each identifying and utilizing certain measurements to help them tell their story. Their approaches may be of interest to other TBED organizations looking to gauge and share their impact with others.

State venture capital programs are an integral part of many state’s technology-based economic development portfolio. These programs can strategically target state investments towards promising high-tech companies at the critical early stages of business development and in areas where private capital is scarce. Venture programs, however, are not always easy to implement. By definition, they require a large fund of investment capital and sufficient manpower to assist and monitor their portfolio companies. Facing these difficulties, some states have turned to other methods of making state investment capital available to entrepreneurs.   

Included within the NSF’s National Patterns of R&D Resources series is data detailing the amount of each state’s total R&D expenditures and gross state product (GSP). Total R&D is calculated by combining a state’s R&D expenditures from federal sources, colleges and universities, federally funded research and development centers, industry and other nonprofit institutions.   SSTI has prepared a table showing the total R&D expenditures divided by the GSP, the percentage of which is often called the R&D intensity, for each state and the District of Columbia from 2000 to 2004. Additionally, the chart illustrates the rank of each state’s 2004 R&D intensity, the percent change of R&D intensity over the five-year period, and the ranking of this percent change.   Leading the pack in 2004 was New Mexico, whose R&D intensity was 8.04 percent. This was followed by Maryland (6.22 percent), Massachusetts (5.11 percent), Michigan (4.56 percent) and Rhode Island (4.4 percent). For the U.S. as a whole, the percentage was 2.56 in 2004.