SSTI Digest

Funding totaling $18 million is available during FY2001 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assist in economic development projects in rural areas. The Rural Economic Development Grants program has $3 million available, while the Rural Economic Development Loans program has $15 million.

The Department of Education has announced its FY 2001 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program solicitation topics. The Phase I solicitation release date is Jan. 26, 2001 with a closing date of April 19, 2001. The agency also will be increasing Phase I award levels this year to $60,000.

After discovering that only 10 percent of the venture capital raised in New Jersey is invested in New Jersey companies, a new venture fund has been established combining private, state, and federal resources. The seed investment fund will be used to assist New Jersey start-up technology businesses get off the ground.



Led by the nonprofit New Jersey Technology Council, NJTC Venture Fund partners include private investors and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. The Authority is providing a 1:3 match for each private dollar raised, up to $10 million. Local newspapers report $22 million in private investment has been raised to date toward the goal of $30 million. The Small Business Investment Corporation (SBIC) program of the Small Business Administration may be used to further leverage the fund.



NJTC Venture Fund will provide between $300,000 to $3 million in seed money to start-ups in a variety of industries, including software, communications, biotech, photonics, healthcare, and electronics companies.



The NJTC was formed in 1996 as a private, non-profit organization dedicated to providing networking opportunities, information and other services to New Jersey technology businesses and now boasts a membership of about 1,000 high tech companies. The state development office estimates that there are some 3,000 more technology companies in Northern New Jersey than in Silicon Valley, but that initial investment is significantly lower in the Garden State’s new tech businesses.



More information is available at: http://www.njtc.org

What can policymakers and practitioners do if the statistics and other metrics indicate a state, region or locality is not well positioned for the technology-based economy, but the elected leaders and economic development professionals are plodding along with traditional approaches to job creation and development? Or, on the other hand, what if there are several fragmented or isolated technology-related activities and success stories occuring that could benefit from a little political exposure and synergy?



Jump-starting tech-based economic development often requires a shift in the mindset or thinking of the economic and political stakeholders for a state or community. Tools often used to encourage this change in outlook include innovation indices or S&T report cards that present the state or region's relative performance along several metrics. Creating state science and technology councils or drafting strategic plans for tech-based economic development are other often used approaches for trying to keep public investment in science and technology on the public agenda.



A third approach is the use of large public conferences or summits to convey the importance of changing paths in economic development policy or to recognize and reward the technology-based activities already underway. Maryland, for example, has held an annual technology summit since 1998. The approach has been particularly popular in the last three months. Minnesota, Mississippi and Wisconsin present three examples:



Minnesota

Twelve hundred people attended a Summit on Minnesota’s Economy, convened by the University of Minnesota on September 20, 2000. Held in response to growing concern over the position of the state to compete in the New Economy, the summit included briefings by experts in a number of areas. The summit examined:

Following on the Summit on Minnesota’s Economy, a 21-member group appointed by the president of the University of Minnesota has unveiled its recommendations to strengthen the state’s economy. The recommendations in Report to the People of Minnesota: Building a Knowledge Economy for Minnesota’s 21st Century are divided among five strategies:



Recommendations in the new report are divided among five strategies:

Western Virginia’s economy is stagnant due to a variety of factors and must get in line with the “New Economy” according to a report commissioned by the Center for Innovative Leadership in Roanoke. A second study by the Center revealed the area's residents appear willing to support activities designed to bring new business and employment to the region.



The report concluded that despite a favorable quality of life in the “New Century Region," as Western Virginia calls itself, the area's economy has been concentrated heavily on declining manufacturing industries and must find ways to attract high technology business.



The region is home to the fourth largest concentration of population in Virginia, but has suffered from cutbacks in defense spending, increases in global competition and corporate mergers. Employment in the region increased by only 0.2 percent in 1999 compared to 2.7 percent for the entire state. The lack of new businesses contributed to stagnant population growth of 0.3 percent in the 1990s versus 1.5 percent for all of Virginia.



“The industry mix in the [New Century Region] has not kept up with the changes in national and local demand and the industry mix is concentrated in forms that have grown at a sluggish rate or have declined over the last few years,” the report said.



The report recommends the region target economic development policies toward fast-growing high tech industries to compensate for an expected decline in labor-intensive industries that currently exist there.



On the positive side, the report found that the area has an excellent higher education base, led by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Carillon Biomedical Institute, that could be a catalyst to transform the region into the biomedical capital of Virginia.

Despite small improvements, Northeast and Midwest regions lag behind the South and West in terms of dollars returned to states from taxes sent to Washington, according to a report issued by the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

The U.S. Department of Agrciulture and the National Institutes of Health released information on 24 inventions that are available for license. Descriptions and contact information for each invention/patent are presented on the accompanying SSTI webpage

A new comprehensive study of the state of higher education in the United States says that as a whole, the nation has made large improvements in the percentage of high school students taking upper-level math and science courses.

Solicitations totaling more than $101 million have been released by the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation (see the National Nanotechnology Initiative webpage at http://www.nano.gov for more details on each opportunity). The amount of funding available is one more indication of the importance that nanotechnology is expected to play in the future. The policy and programmatic implications for science, technology, and economic development programs will be significant as more applications are perfected and commercialized.

New legislation to help revitalize technology development in Washington, D.C. received unanimous approval from the Council of the District of Columbia and is expected to be signed by Mayor Anthony Williams.

All but one of the metro areas evaluated saw their high-tech industry employment grow during the last five years according to a 135-page report, Cybercities: A City By City Overview of the High-Technology Industry.