SSTI Digest

Correction: In last week's People column, Tom Walker's new title was incorrect. Mr Walker is executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center.

Richard Greene, director of the Arlington Technology Incubator and former mayor of Arlington Texas, has been appointed regional administrator of the U.S. EPA.

Doris Freedman has announced she is leaving the National Commission on Entrepreneurship effective March 31.

Colorado Governor Bill Owens has appointed Paul Ray as the state's first director of biosciences.

Peter Slate will preside as chief executive officer over the Arizona Technology Enterprises, the newly created limited liability company formed by spinning off Arizona State University's technology transfer office.

U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has called on the Senate’s top appropriators to help reverse budget elimination of two key programs designed to strengthen the technological competitiveness of small businesses. Snowe and a bipartisan group of 14 other senators released a letter calling on Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Ranking Member Robert Byrd (D-WV) to help identify new sources of funding “to alleviate the severe impact” of FY 2003 cuts in the Federal and State Technical Partnership (FAST) and Rural Outreach Programs (ROP) administered by the Small Business Administration. Both federal programs provide matching grants to state initiatives to help small businesses with technology development and commercialization. A total of $3.5 million in combined funding for FAST and ROP were cut from the Conference Report on the Omnibus Appropriations Act, which was signed into law by the President on February 20. The Bush Administration had requested $3 million in FY03 for the SBIR FAST program and $500,000…

A bi-partisan group of Senators have cosponsored the "New Homestead Economic Opportunity Act" to help renew the promise of the original Homestead Act to attract new residents and businesses to rural areas suffering from high out-migration. Introduced by Senator Bryon Dorgan (D-ND) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) this week, the bill provides incentive tools including a $3 billion venture capital fund. S. 602 calls for a federal injection of $200 million annually between 2004-2013 into the New Homestead Venture Capital Fund, after $100 million in investments have been made each year from private and nonfederal sources. The purpose of the fund would be to strengthen the economies of qualifying counties – those which have seen a net outmigration exceeding 10 percent over the past 20 years – by: providing equity funding for existing and startup rural businesses with high potential for job creation that are or will be located in qualifying counties; supporting technical and other similar assistance to rural businesses; and, providing incentives to greater participation by authorized private…

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has posted a preliminary list of the 10 U.S. universities receiving the most patents for inventions during calendar year 2002. The University of California tops the list for the ninth consecutive year. The table below also presents the school's 2001 ranking and total.  Preliminary Rank in 2002* Preliminary #  Patents in 2002* Organization 2001  Rank  2001 # of  Patents 1 431 University of California** 1 402 2 135 Massachusetts Institute of Technology…

Wrapping up its 2003 session earlier this month, the West Virginia State Legislature passed three bills designed to help build a technology-based economy. Senate Bill 646 calls for the creation of university-affiliated centers for economic development and technology advancement to support industry/academic R&D partnerships and technology commercialization. One nonprofit center is to be established in association with each of the state's doctoral institutions. Center activities may include: evaluation of technology; verification and assessment of market applications; grant administration and human resource management for any entity associated with the doctoral institution if the entity is engaged in business-industry collaborations; and, technology advancement, commercialization activities and research into new areas of economic development. The centers have the right to receive, lease and sell real, personal and intellectual property. Senate Bill 651 creates the West Virginia Academy of Science and Technology to support R&D, assist in the transfer of…

Earlier this week, Colorado Chief Technology Officer John Hansen released a statewide plan to develop biotechnology and life sciences industry sectors in Colorado. Colorado's Place in the Sun: A Bioscience Future provides analysis, direction and recommended actions for three key sector areas — workforce development, business development, and research development. After outlining the state's current strengths in biotech and life sciences, the plan identifies several key factors for success: "engaged research organizations with active leadership across research, technology commercialization, and industry partnerships "intensive networking across sectors and with industry "available indigenous capital covering all stages of the business cycle "discretionary federal or other R&D funding support "workforce and talent pool on which to build and sustain efforts "access to specialized facilities and equipment "stable and supportive business, tax, and regulatory policies "patience and a long-term perspective." Some of the plan's primary recommendations include…

Conventional wisdom in the technology-based economic development community is that increased access to risk capital is critical for building competitive economies. Establishing a causal relationship between early-stage capital and employment growth external to the companies receiving the funds has been difficult, however. A new working paper from the University of Vienna presents a model linking venture capital investment and job growth on the national level. Does Venture Capital Investment Spur Employment Growth?, written by Ansgar Belke, Rainer Fehn and Neil Foster, finds "a one unit increase in venture capital will increase employment growth by 1.8 percentage points." Looking at data on a sample of 20 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) over the period of 1986-1999, the authors conclude an increase of one standard deviation in early-stage capital alone is associated with a positive change in employment ranging between 1.1 and 1.4 percent. Five policy recommendations – some of which may have value for U.S. states – suggest ways…

Conventional wisdom in the technology-based economic development community is that increased access to risk capital is critical for building competitive economies. Establishing a causal relationship between early-stage capital and employment growth external to the companies receiving the funds has been difficult, however. A new working paper from the University of Vienna presents a model linking venture capital investment and job growth on the national level. Does Venture Capital Investment Spur Employment Growth?, written by Ansgar Belke, Rainer Fehn and Neil Foster, finds "a one unit increase in venture capital will increase employment growth by 1.8 percentage points." Looking at data on a sample of 20 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) over the period of 1986-1999, the authors conclude an increase of one standard deviation in early-stage capital alone is associated with a positive change in employment ranging between 1.1 and 1.4 percent. Five policy recommendations – some of which may have value for U.S. states – suggest ways…