SSTI Digest

Jim Tate has been named Science Advisor for the U.S. Department of Interior. Until his appointment, Dr. Tate served as Advisory Scientist for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Julia Wilson is the new Executive Director of the San Diego Telecom Council. She formerly was director of corporate and foundation relations for San Diego State University.

The Maryland Department of Business & Economic Development has hired Lawrence C. Mahan to serve as the state's senior biotech executive.

Maria Estela de Rios has been named chairwoman of the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership Board of Directors. She is executive vice president of Orion International Technologies, which is based in Albuquerque.

Nearly all public schools in the U.S. are connected to the Internet, according to a survey published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The survey, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994 – 2000, shows that 98 percent of public schools had access to the Internet by the fall of 2000, representing a 3 percent increase over 1999 and a 26 percent increase since 1997.



The survey also shows the number of public schools with instructional rooms possessing Internet connections is on the rise. Seventy-seven percent of such rooms were connected to the Internet in the fall of 2000–a notable increase over the 63 percent in 1999. During this time, the ratio of students to instructional computers in public schools decreased to 5 to 1, while the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access improved from 9 to 1 in 1999 to 7 to 1 in 2000.



Schools of different settings–city, rural, town and urban fringe–demonstrated little difference in general Internet accessibility. Of all the types, however, town schools were most likely to have Internet connections in instructional rooms, at 87 percent, and city schools were the least likely, at 66 percent. Rural and urban schools fell at 85 percent and 78 percent, respectively.



In most cases, a gap in Internet access existed between schools with a high concentration of students in poverty and those with a low concentration of poverty. Similarly, a gap existed between schools with high and low minority enrollments. However, in schools with the highest concentration of students in poverty, instructional rooms with Internet access increased by 58 percent between 1999 and 2000 to 60 percent. Sixty-four percent of instructional rooms in schools with the highest minority enrollment had Internet access, an increase of 49 percent from a year earlier.



Other findings in the survey were:

Is a strong university research component critical to local tech-based economic development? Many argue this position, including SSTI (Using Research and Development to Grow State Economies). Using data on royalties, licenses, and job creation figures, others have demonstrated the economic contributions of university R&D. (See for instance, the annual licensing survey from the Association of University Technology Managers.)



But can strong research universities contribute more to local technological innovation than large industrial research laboratories – or can communities achieve the same degree of success in building tech-based economies by concentrating resources toward attracting industrial research laboratories?



At issue, are the local “spillover” effects of industrial and academic research. Spillovers may include, for example, new company formations, job creation, increased research contracts, etc. Which type of research on average, industrial or academic, results in more spillovers to the local economy? John Adams, with the Department of Economics at the University of Florida, explores the issue in Comparative Localization of Academic and Industrial Spillovers, one of the latest Working Papers released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.



Using data from a sample of R&D labs owned by U.S. manufacturing firms, Adams finds the spillover effects of academic research to be more localized than industrial R&D on average. He concludes from his analysis that "localized academic spillovers reflect open science and the industry-university cooperative movement, which encourages firms to work with local universities, so that localization coincides with the public goods nature of science. This situation contrasts with relations with other firms, where contractual arrangements are needed to access proprietary information, often at a considerable distance.”



The policy implications for state and local tech-based economic development efforts, while not addressed in Adams' paper, may be interpreted as supporting efforts to 1) increase academic research activity within local universities, and 2) encourage industry-university collaborative partnerships, which many states do through their centers of excellence and university-industry research grant programs.



Adams concludes that industrial firms tend to turn to local universities more often for applied research, technical assistance, and students/employees. In contrast, industrial partnerships are more selective and more driven by “personnel movements and collaborative ventures.”



Other conclusions in the paper would lend support to tech-based economic development strategies of attracting more federal R&D grants in local academic institutions, stressing investment in basic or early stage research, and encouraging more university patenting. Adams reports the greater the amount of federally supported university R&D near a firm drives localization of academic spillovers and, subsequently, industrial spillovers.



Spillovers from university patenting also was found to be more localized than industrial patenting. The paper also suggests “spillover from new products, although weaker than patent spillovers, are still more localized” for universities than industrial product development.



Adam's last point suggests that state and academic policies and programs that encourage faculty tech-based entrepreneurship and technology commercialization may prove particularly beneficial for building local tech-based economies.



Comparative Localization of Academic and Industrial Spillovers (NBER Working Paper No. 8292) can be purchased online from NBER for $5.00 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8292

Arizona

In spite of a tight budget resulting in cuts of $600 million, the Business Journal reports the Arizona state legislature has appropriated $3 million to launch implementation of the strategic plan developed by the APNE, the Arizona Partnership for the New Economy (see the Jan. 26, 2001 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest for a story on the plan). The funds, to be focused primarily on rural telecom initiatives, will be administered by the Department of Commerce. For more information on APNE see: http://www.commerce.state.az.us/neweconomy/APNE.htm

President Bush has announced his intention to nominate the following people to positions within the federal government that affect state and local tech-based economic development:

President Bush has announced his intention to nominate the following people to positions within the federal government that affect state and local tech-based economic development:

Mark Lang, CEO of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania for the past 14 years, has announced his resignation.

Lu Cordova is the new President of the Colorado Technology Incubator.

The Center for Environmental Enterprise (CEE) in South Portland, Maine announced the hiring of a new executive director. John Ferland assumed leadership of CEE in late April.