SSTI Digest

Improved prospects for economic development, as opposed to concerns about government efficiency, can play an important role in building support for local government consolidation efforts. The importance of economic opportunities in government consolidation was a key conclusion within Ball State University’s recently published policy brief, Indiana’s Government Modernization Act & Local Government Consolidation Experiences: Process and Politics. The brief examined seven consolidation efforts that occurred in Indiana between 2008 and 2012 and explored the preexisting conditions of the areas. While each consolidation attempt had unique variables, Ball State’s report did reveal several common elements. Contrary to previously held beliefs, consolidation processes are not necessarily born out of a crisis climate; some were found to be the product of a consensus between two governments to find new ways of solving their shared problems. Ball State also found that the reason for consolidation was an important factor in the effort’s success in finding voter support. Two consolidation efforts that were approved by voters were presented as a solution to the areas’…

Six organizations — including SSTI members Catalyst Connection and the Ohio Development Services Agency — have been designated to lead the new defense manufacturing community consortia. The Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA) has announce that these organizations are now eligible to enter the next phase of development and submit their requests for technical assistance, grants, and other support services. The Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program (DMCSP) was authorized in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act as a new program offered by OEA. It is designed to make long-term investments in critical skills, facilities, research and development, and small business support in order to strengthen the national security innovation base by designating and supporting consortiums as defense manufacturing communities. Click here to view the list of designees and the fields/industries they intend to develop in their communities.

As the global economy continues to struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released an interactive online tool for discovering success stories of small business innovation and entrepreneurship. Showcasing several of the businesses that have successfully leveraged NIH small business funding — totaling more than $1 billion annually — to develop healthcare products and services, NIH’s Small Business Education and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) office hopes that the tool will inspire others to start businesses and develop their technologies. The tool allows users to search for companies based on the stage of development, funding institute, women and minority owned business, and others. Highlighting companies that have successfully developed, or are developing, new technologies will also inform potential investors and venture capitalists about the importance of NIH in strengthening companies and their technologies as they move towards commercialization.

The House has now passed 10 of the 12 annual appropriations bills for FY 2021. Within the total funding is support for key innovation priorities, including $35 million for EDA’s Build-to-Scale (i.e., Regional Innovation Strategies), $6 million for SBA’s innovation clusters program and $4 million for Federal and State Technology Partnerships (FAST). SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council had made expanding funding for each of these initiatives a priority for the year. Science and innovation highlights within the House FY 2021 budget include the following: Economic Development Administration – Build-to-Scale – $35 million (+ $2 million from FY 2020) STEM apprenticeships – $4.5 million (+ $2.5 million) Small Business Administration – Regional Innovation Clusters – $6 million (+ $1 million) FAST – $4 million (+ $1 million) Growth Accelerators Challenge – $2 million (no change) National Institute of Standards & Technology – Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) – $153 million (+ $7 million) Manufacturing USA centers – $17 million (+ $1 million) National Science Foundation – $8.6 billion (+ $270 million) Appalachian Regional…

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson last week announced that $1 million of the state’s CARES Act funding will be used to create a grant for nonprofit and university-based coworker and incubator facilities. The grant will be administered by the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC). Organizations will be reimbursed with grant funds for expenses related to updating the facilities to encourage social distancing, adopting enhanced sanitation protocols or acquiring PPE to comply with the guidelines of the public health emergency. More information about the program can be found here. Unfortunately, these new funds represent replacement, rather than additive, funding for MTC. Prior to this program, Parson announced he would be withholding MTC’s entire $1 million 2021 budget as part of cutbacks to state spending due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The state organization supports startups through direct co-investments, matching grant programs, provides funding to nine innovation centers and entrepreneurial support programs. The CARES funding will support some of these initiatives but others will be funded through other federal resources or else lapse for the current year.

A recent report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation examined the changing makeup of entrepreneurship over the period of 1996 to 2019, finding that older people, immigrants, and minorities are becoming new entrepreneurs at increasing rates. The report pulls from data collected for the foundation’s Indicators of Early-Stage Entrepreneurship series, and examines the trends in race and ethnicity, age, and immigration among new entrepreneurs. The report highlights three findings: The share of all new entrepreneurs – broadly defined as any adult who starts a new business — who are Latinx doubled between 1996 and 2019. The report also shows that the share of Black and Asian entrepreneurs has grown but at a moderate pace relative to the Latinx population, while the share of all new entrepreneurs who are white decreased over the same period. New entrepreneurs were generally younger in 1996, but were more representative of all age groups in 2019. The data are segmented into four age groups — ages 20-34, 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64. The report indicates that new entrepreneurship among the younger two groups has steadily decreased over the period, while entrepreneurship…

More than 500 colleges and universities nationwide showed warning signs in a stress test that was conducted before the pandemic according to a new series of reports by the Hechinger Report and NBC News. Declining enrollment and decreased state government support had left dozens of universities under financial stress. With the added pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, “the fabric of American higher education as become even more strained,” the report says. The Hechinger Report created a financial fitness tracker examining key metrics including enrollment, tuition revenue, public funding and endowment health among 2,662 schools that were included in the analysis. In addition to the more than 500 schools that showed warning signs in two or more metrics, the analysis found an uneven distribution of problems with Ohio and Illinois combined having more than 10 percent of all the institutions potentially facing trouble. Other findings show that nearly 30 percent of all four-year schools brought in less tuition revenue per student in 2017-18 than in 2009-10; about 700 public campuses received less in state and local appropriations over that same time period; and,…

The importance of higher education institutions in helping rural communities build innovation-based ecosystems has been detailed in a report released by the Center on Rural Innovation. Higher Ed’s Key Role In Rural Innovation Ecosystems profiles 10 colleges and universities that have been engaged in their area’s innovation environment and explores what techniques each institution has found most useful in building that ecosystem. While each college and university has a different roadmap toward building their area’s innovation environment, the Center on Rural Innovation found four primary categories that play an important part in higher ed’s contributions to building rural innovation and tech-based ecosystems: Digital skills programing – The report notes that rural colleges and universities have found success in expanding their information technology offerings, providing students with a stronger foundation of digital skills and potentially attracting growing tech-based industries. Additionally, higher education’s focus on expanding information technology programing can also lead to stronger connectivity for the area, attracting broadband service providers that…

A leading technology association has stepped up to positively impact tech diversity and inclusion through a new challenge that aims to double the percentage of the state’s Black and Latinx tech workers — currently at 5 and 7 percent respectively — by the end of the decade. The Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) launched a 2030 Challenge earlier this week that also will continue to work towards gender parity in the state’s tech workforce. According to a release announcing the initiative, the new challenge came about in response to the organization’s benchmarking of the state’s tech sector, including key metrics on race, ethnicity and gender, which showed that the Massachusetts tech sector, one of the highest paying sectors in one of the most expensive regions in the country, does not adequately reflect the diverse population of the state. MassTLC is inviting organizations that employ tech workers to join the Tech Compact for Social Justice by committing to change within their own organizations. MassTLC will work with Tech Compact signers over the coming months and years to track progress, spotlight leadership, share best practices, work to…

Non-college workers who long found refuge and economic mobility in thriving cities have seen those opportunities diminish and in turn have moved out of the areas. Although cities remain vibrant for workers with advanced degrees, “the urban skills and earnings escalator for non-college workers has lost its ability to lift workers up the income ladder,” finds David Autor in his recent research brief. The Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunity highlights this troubling trend plaguing cities since 1980 and posits some policy prescriptions to try to combat the negative trends. Additionally, Autor cautions that the present COVID-19 crisis could exacerbate the challenges afflicting non-college workers in U.S. cities. Autor, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Labor Studies Program, and co-chair of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, explores how the opportunity offered by urban and non-urban labor markets to college and non-college workers has changed since 1980. Noting that the polarization of work (employment has become increasingly concentrated in high-education, high-wage occupations and in low-education, low-wage occupations, at the expense…

After more than a year of research and facing greater disruption to the workforce than imagined at the outset, the National Governors Association (NGA) has released a guide for governors and state policymakers to help build a technologically resilient workforce. Written before the COVID-19 outbreak, the authors of the report attest that trends previously identified will only accelerate, and thus there is even greater urgency for policy transformations that should be implemented as part of a system wide, resilient education and workforce development agenda.

While business investments towards research and development have varied among states, the overall trend throughout the country has been a positive one. Business R&D funding has weathered two recessions over the past 20 years, with many states seeing investments grow beyond their pre-recession levels. While the scope of COVID-19’s economic impact continues to grow, business R&D investment has shown a strong history of recovering from, and building beyond, national financial downturns. While SSTI has recently reviewed business R&D investments, it is revisited here to examine longer-term trends and to help build an idea of how business R&D spending was affected by both the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Despite these economic downturns, states across the country prior to the pandemic had begun to see their business R&D investments grow beyond their pre-recession levels. Although the economic impacts of COVID-19 continue to grow, an understanding of how states’ business R&D funding reacted to previous financial downturns may prove helpful moving forward. The data, gathered from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering…