SSTI Digest

The 2005 budget request submitted this week by Florida Governor Jeb Bush includes $20 million to establish two more Centers of Excellence at Florida universities. The new centers would join the three selected last year through a competitive process [see the May 16, 2003 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest.] Each center receives $10 million from the state and is designed to foster innovative, cutting-edge technology research at Florida’s colleges and universities, develop commercially viable applications for that research, and recruit high-tech industries and thinkers to the state. The initial legislation enabling the state's investment in the centers permitted creation of up to five.

To help strengthen the academic research infrastructure, Gov. Bush also recommended the state commit $25 million to match private donations to state universities.

Nearly every region engaged in building a tech-based economy wants more access to seed and venture capital money. It's particularly useful when your largest employer announces it will lay off up to 23 percent of its workforce – as many as 5,000 people in your community and 15,000 across the globe – during the next three years.

The generous but bittersweet offer came from Eastman Kodak Company last week as it announced the creation of a $15 million economic development fund designed to promote business development and job creation in the greater Rochester region. Kodak currently employs more than 20,000 people in Rochester, a third of its total employment of 64,000 worldwide in 2003.

Despite a sluggish national economy, North Carolina held its own over the last three years, according to a measure of 25 broad indicators of innovation, technology and economic growth released earlier this week. In all, Tracking Innovation: North Carolina Innovation Index 2003 considers more than 50 performance measures across five general categories, highlighting the state’s strengths and weaknesses.

North Carolina’s performance on each measure is compared to that of the U.S. as a whole and that of six selected states — Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. The 76-page index, sponsored biennially by the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology (BST), argues that the state’s technology-intensive economy, fueled by high and increasing levels of inputs, is strong at its core.

It's one thing to call your entrepreneurship education efforts the best, but it's another when more than 950 of your peers from around the country do. The entrepreneurship program at Harvard Business School (HBS) recently won the top award for MBA programs nationwide from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), an organization devoted to entrepreneurship education and development. USASBE named Harvard Business School as its National Model MBA Program winner at the organization's annual conference in Dallas on Jan. 17-19.

This is the third in a series of articles as SSTI continues its look at the prominence of tech-based economic development in the Inaugural, State of the State and Budget Addresses given by the nation's governors. Highlights from this week's speeches are provided below.

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, State of the State Address, Jan. 26, 2004 "Conservation, waste-to-energy programs and alternative energy initiatives can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and move our state to the forefront of progressive energy policies. To demonstrate the state's commitment and leadership role, I ask you today to pass our bill that mandates 20 percent of all electricity sold in the year 2020 come from renewable sources.

Ohio’s IT Alliance (OITA) invites applications and nominations for the position of President and Chief Executive Officer. OITA's mission as a statewide public/private partnership is to drive the growth and improve the competitiveness of Ohio through the development and support of its information technology industry. The new President will enhance OITA’s role as the key public/private catalyst for industry growth and success. The successful candidate must: demonstrate a strong public presence with the ability to lead through influence; have compelling analytic and strategic problem solving and planning abilities; evidence successful leadership in an IT enterprise or function in both strategy and operating roles; demonstrate a successful track record in sales/marketing, business development, operations, and fund raising in technology based companies or related organization; and possess familiarity/experience with technology based economic development.

In last week's Tech Talkin' Govs II article, we inadvertently listed Mark Warner as the Governor of South Carolina. Gov. Warner leads the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mark Sanford is Governor of South Carolina. SSTI regrets the error.

Following 41 straight months of job losses in the manufacturing sector, the Bush Administration released its long-awaited strategy to help revive manufacturing. Manufacturing in America: A Comprehensive Strategy to Address the Challenges to U.S. Manufacturers makes 31 recommendations designed to address challenges identified through 23 roundtable discussions that were held across the country.

Included in the recommendations is support for "a newly coordinated Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)." While much of the press attention across the country has indicated that this is a major reversal on the Administration's part, the picture is not as simple as that. The Administration's fiscal year 2004 budget request of $12.6 million for MEP would have cut funding to all but two of the MEP centers. The budget approved by Congress on Thursday contains $39.6 million for MEP, down from the FY 2003 level of $106 million.

The satisfying flavor of success in tech-based economic development is whetting Oklahoma's appetite for more. Lots more.

The past two weeks in the Sooner State have seen the release of the third annual impact report from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST), Gov. Brad Henry's appointment of a science and technology advisor, and the culminating $1 billion action plan of the governor's Economic Development Generating Excellence (EDGE) task force.

A new report from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) finds the federal government’s expanding investment in Homeland Security-related research is already proving a major boon to the high tech economy in Massachusetts, but the state’s overall leadership in federally-funded research and development (R&D) is under intensifying pressure from states throughout the country.

The MTC report tracks $3.3 billion in new federal funding for Homeland Security R&D to key industry clusters in Massachusetts and finds the most significant opportunities lie in the life sciences. Recent major grants (e.g. BU National Biocontainment Laboratory and the Harvard Medical School Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research) will strengthen the region’s existing assets in fields related to bio-terrorism defense and the detection, prevention and cure of infectious disease.

Three I's neatly sum up the 22 recommendations recently released by Maryland Governor Robert Erlich's Commission on Development of Advanced Technology Business — Investment, Innovation, and Image. The year-long study looked at the state's existing physical, financial and intellectual infrastructures to support the state's research and technology sectors, making specific recommendations in three groupings to foster continued growth.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) figures prominently in many of the recommendations, and, in partnership with the Department of Business and Economic Development, the research universities and the state's regional technology councils could play an even more significant role in the state's technology strategy if the plan is fully implemented.

The line was drawn in the sand a year ago. Some felt Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), the Commonwealth's lead organization for science and technology, had been set up for failure in a partisan fight for limited public revenues. Like the rest of Virginia's economic development portfolio, CIT took a big hit in the budget cycle as Virginia dealt with a multibillion-dollar deficit in fiscal year 2003. CIT's budget was slashed to $7.8 million, yet its targeted total impact for the year was $266.8 million. Could it be done?

In a word, yes.

Dismissing all doubters, CIT released a report last week of its audited FY 2003 performance that shows economic impact totaling $318.6 million, a return of more than 40 times the Commonwealth's $7.8 million investment.