SSTI Digest

Three major announcements were made in Singapore last month focusing on R&D of new technologies and educating the workforce to produce specialized graduates in upcoming fields.   Development plans for Asia’s first zero-energy building (ZEB) were released by the Parliamentary Secretary for National Development. The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) will retrofit an existing building that will both house classrooms and offices and serve as a testbed for green technology research. Slated for completion in 2009, the ZEB is expected to be 60 percent more energy efficient than an average commercial building. The building will create a highly efficient complex that produces as much energy as it consumes from renewable resources.   The National University of Singapore will use the facilities for testing technologies that come out of the university’s research laboratories. The project is jointly funded by the Ministry of National Development and the MND Research Fund for the Built Environment. The BCA also is stepping up its efforts in industry training and will offer a new Diploma program next year in mechanical…

One continuing challenge states and regions are attempting to overcome is adjusting their workforces in a rapidly changing, innovation-driven, global economy. The growing consensus emerging from many people examining science and technology competitiveness is that U.S. students need to be academically stronger in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields than they are today and that the supply of graduates with a science background needs to increase. This advice comes as other countries around the world, with populations large and small, pursue this same strategy to increase the quality and quantity of future workers with backgrounds in science and technology.   In response to this challenge, education policies and new initiatives at the federal, state and local levels are focusing on the preparation of students for careers in science and engineering (S&E) fields. However, a report released in October questions if enacting policies to increase the number of STEM students and improve the quality of students are the most efficient means to supply the S&E workforce.   In Into the Eye of the…

Nearly 700 new products resulting from university research handled by technology transfer offices reached the marketplace in FY 2006, according to the latest Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) Survey of U.S. Licensing Activity released this week.   The 189 research performing institutions that participated in the survey also reported the creation of 553 start-ups during the year and almost 5,000 new licensing relationships with companies.   The AUTM survey provides core data for most of the empirical analysis of university tech transfer efforts. As such, it has drawn criticism in the past for what is not measured – a common complaint for measuring the impact of nearly all research and economic activity. For instance, the National Science Foundation continues to invest considerable staff time and financial resources into developing better measures of an innovation-based economy.   AUTM also is taking strides to improve its survey instrument. While those changes are not evident yet in the 2006 survey, the summary report suggests additional surveys and modifications to the seminal…

During the past year, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has garnered a great deal of attention, setting the stage for a national debate over potential changes to the well known federal program – namely the issue of participation from companies with venture-capital backing. With congressional reauthorization on the horizon for next year, SSTI examined the SBIR program in-depth during a breakout session at the annual conference in October, looking at both current status and future developments. Compiling award and proposal statistics by state for fiscal year 2006, SSTI finds the 10 states with the most awards in FY 2006 were California (725), Massachusetts (466), Virginia (221), Texas (176), Colorado (173), Maryland (169), Ohio (167), New York (163), Pennsylvania (133) and Washington (91). Compared to the top states for FY05, little changed other than Texas, Colorado and Maryland switching around fourth through sixth places and Washington edging out Michigan for the 10th slot.   SSTI has prepared a table showing FY 2006 Phase I SBIR data for all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.…

A complete description of this opportunity and others is available at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. Griffin Analytical Technologies, a high-tech, high-growth chemical detection company focused on identifying chemical warfare agents and explosives and environmental monitoring applications, is seeking someone for the position of research scientist. This position is responsible, in part, for performing R&D in the chemical, explosives and bio detection areas and helping to identify funding opportunities. A Ph.D. or M.S. degree in chemistry is preferred; a B.S. degree with five-plus years of experience will be considered.

Edison had Menlo Park. Monet had the gardens at Giverny. Ubiquitous computing had PARC. To what extent were the great things that happened at each of these localities influenced by the places themselves?    Reducing that question to economic development policy terms: Can the places of great creations be created by design?   In this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, we examine how the design and planning of physical space can influence scientific discovery, individuals and research groups, and the performance of technology-based economic development (TBED) organizations. We combine concepts from many fields – including architecture, urban planning and, of course, economic development – to present various perspectives that may be of interest to the TBED community.   Looking at research parks, as we do in one article below, you sense their growing importance as places of innovation. But drive through one of the nation’s larger research parks and one may feel a sense of separateness, as research facilities are often set on manicured lawns physically apart from each other. These places are…

Building structures that contain laboratory space are becoming an important component of many entities pursuing TBED strategies. Research spaces such as cleanrooms and wetlabs pop up throughout universities, but they also are being constructed within research parks and business incubators.   As the limits of our scientific knowledge continually expand, does the design of buildings housing these laboratories need to evolve as well? New technologies require understanding and input across multiple disciplines. Reductionism as the preferred approach for scientific discovery is giving way toward the convergence of knowledge across fields, or "consilience" as E.O. Wilson and others have called it. Perhaps the way to orient the physical environment around researchers can be configured such that U.S. innovators become more innovative.   An article in Metropolis magazine from February 2007 delves into the subject of architecture effecting the production of discoveries. In “The DNA of Science Labs,” Steven Zacks reviews principally the Janelia Farms Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and considers the future of…

The theory of spatial clustering has been very popular in the TBED field for many years, as researchers attempt to explain the transformation of places like Silicon Valley and the reasons various locales are economically competitive. Practitioners have utilized the theory as a method to describe their own state and regional economies and to support the development of specific industries. As an industry cluster grows, additional benefits of agglomeration are realized.   These benefits include the creation of a localized skilled pool of labor, saving funds from sharing infrastructure and reduced costs of transactions, and knowledge spillovers which create more rapid sharing of information across an industry. The geographic reach of clusters, a subject still under investigation by the research community, sometimes varies by size depending who is using the term. In some studies, clusters are at the state level, while others cluster studies are limited to the regional or even neighborhood level.   Depending on the industry, certain benefits to co-location exist. But can these benefits of co-location be applied to the various…

The physical layouts of many colleges and universities across North America are undergoing dramatic changes as more and more relationships develop outside of the traditional boundaries of institutions of higher learning. As public-private partnerships are established, additional research parks are being built on or adjacent to campus, and in some cases, empty space is designed into new academic and research buildings to accommodate future spin-off companies and incubating firms.   Numerous universities also are trying to productively manage the development of their physical space. The New York Times reported last month in a story titled “Sun Belt Growth Is Playing Out on Campus” that soaring population growth is drastically expanding enrollment and campus size in locations across the country. For example, seven years ago, Arizona State University was at 50,000 students. It is up to 64,000 students today and plans to grow to 90,000 students by 2020. With this in mind, balancing quality with quantity may be a challenge for school administrators.   Are there strategies that exist to help universities accommodate these…

The establishment and maintenance of research parks has been a strategy for many organizations to strengthen TBED within their regions. This strategy continues to grow, as announcements for new research parks and the expansion of established ones take place all over the U.S. and Canada. But looking at these research parks in aggregate, what can we learn about them? And what can current developments tell us about the design of research parks in the future?   A study released at this year’s Association of University Research Parks (AURP) National Conference in St. Louis sheds light on these questions. Prepared by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice in partnership with AURP, Characteristics and Trends in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions states about 300,000 people work in research parks, with the parks occupying a combined 124 million sq. ft. in 1,833 buildings.   Looking deeper into the traits of these parks, the report finds 80 percent of research park workers are employed in the private sector, compared to 11 percent working for colleges and universities, 6 percent for government, and the…

Throughout this special issue of the Digest, we’ve explored how future trends in design may affect how TBED practitioners advance the field and how altering the organization of the physical components around us – from laboratory space to economic development organizations – may impact innovative performance. It seems an emerging field, one that is sought in the design community and one that may be welcomed by the customers of design services, is the practice of evaluating the spaces that are intended to produce innovation.   Earlier this year, a team of authors, with a wide variety of professional backgrounds from several European countries, proposed a model to evaluate these spaces in the journal, Creativity and Innovation Management. In “Innovation Spaces: Towards a Framework for Understanding the Role of the Physical Environment in Innovation,” the authors construct a transformation model with inputs and outputs, to separate the steps by which an initial strategic goal can be transformed to realized achievement. In this case, the process takes place within the context of an adaptable physical space.   The authors…

A handful of competitiveness reports have been released in the past two weeks, each comparing various geographic locations and incorporating a range of innovation metrics. Perhaps the publication garnering the most international press has been The Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008 by the World Economic Forum. Produced since 1979, this year’s version of the Report includes the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, which incorporates 12 “pillars of competitiveness” consisting of roughly 120 variables to rank 131 countries. These pillars range from Infrastructure and Macroeconomic Stability to more advanced groupings such as Technological Readiness and Innovation. The U.S. and Canada are ranked first and 12th, respectively, in the report's Innovation subgroup. Each country’s Innovation ranking was calculated using such variables as the quality of scientific research institutions, company spending on R&D, government procurement of advanced technology products, the availability of scientists and engineers, and intellectual property protection, among others. The top five countries in terms of the composite GCI score were the U.S., Switzerland, Denmark…