SSTI Digest

Evan Barrett was named chief business officer of The Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity in Montana.

Betsy Biemann will be the new director of the Maine Technology Institute, pending legislative confirmation in January. Biemann currently serves as an associate director at The Rockefeller Foundation.

Brian Fitzgerald will be executive director of the Business-Higher Education Forum, a nonprofit organization that separated earlier this year from the American Council on Education, beginning in January. Fitzgerald stepped down from the independent Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, a panel that advises legislators and the U.S. Department of Education on student-aid issues.

Kelly Lewis, a state legislator in Pennyslvania, will be the new president and CEO of the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania, beginning Jan. 1.

C. Peter Magrath, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, announced he will resign from his position in late 2005.

Indiana Gov.-elect Mitch Daniels recently named Michael "Mickey" Maurer as president of the Indiana Economic Development Corp.

Whether it is explicitly stated or implicitly understood, one of the distinctions between technology-based economic development (TBED) and more traditional economic development functions is TBED's goal of encouraging the creation of high-skill, high-wage jobs to raise the standard of living for the state or region's residents. An area's income levels and its positive change over time could be considered measures of success toward that goal.

But should affluence be the measure of competitiveness? The Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) answers yes in its fourth annual indicator report, Metro Area and State Competitiveness Report 2004. Authors Jonathan Haughton and Cagdas Sirin define competitiveness as "the policies and conditions that ensure and sustain a higher level of per capita income and its continued growth.”

It may not be getting much attention from the White House or Congress, but encouraging innovation and technology-based economic development through coordinated national strategies and initiatives is very much on the legislative agenda of many other countries around the world. Recent highlights from the past few weeks include (all dollar figures are for U.S. equivalencies):

Friday's issue of the Idaho SBIR Competition Newsletter brought to our attention two announcements from the SBA regarding the SBIR Program. Proposed changes for the program were included in the Dec. 3 online issue of the Federal Register. We reprint an extended excerpt of the text from the Idaho SBIR Competition Newsletter verbatim below, with our great appreciation for the work of Dr. Chris Busch, consultant to the University of Idaho EPSCoR Program, and Dr. Jean'ne Shreeve, Idaho EPSCoR/IDeA project director.

Even with record participation from 165 U.S. universities and 32 research hospitals, the 13th annual licensing survey conducted by the Association of University of Technology Managers (AUTM) reveals a 6.7 percent drop in the number of start-up companies created with technology licensed from the responding schools.

AUTM Licensing Survey: FY 2003 provides information about licensing activities at a record-high 197 U.S. and 38 Canadian universities, hospitals and research institutions. The survey is presented in two separate reports for U.S. and Canadian institutions for the first time.

In addition to licenses and options executed, the survey tracks new commercial products, new companies established, and royalty revenue.

For many university tech transfer operations, the need to generate revenues to support the office and attempt to meet the often pie-in-the-sky expectations of school administrators can force licensing efforts toward only the biggest deals. Thanks to a large donation to serve as an endowment, the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering will be able to count on $1 million in interest income to support its technology transfer activities.

On the heels of a report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) urging reform for interdisciplinary research, Congress gave its final approval of a bill designed to effectively promote collaborative research among universities and the public and private sectors. The Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act of 2004 would allow the government to approve patent applications of inventions that have been made collaboratively among multiple organizations (see the June 28, 2004 issue of the Digest). The bill currently awaits the signature of President Bush.