SSTI Digest

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed the Clean & Reliable Grid Affordability Act, which seeks to make energy more affordable, including the incentivizing of battery storage and kick-starting nuclear power and renewable energy development in the state. 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced that Elon Musk’s company, xAI, is investing over $20 billion in his state to build a new data center and power plant in Southaven. The center represents the largest single investment in the state’s history, Reeves said.

As we come to the end of February, more than half of the governors have either delivered their 2026 State of the State, their Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Budget addresses, or a combination of the two, laying out their priorities for the coming year. With forecasted revenues for many states tightening, many governors and lawmakers, with a few exceptions, offer cautious or constrained funding priorities and proposed initiatives.

For the United States to achieve greater security in chip manufacturing, the critical sector requires a much larger, better trained workforce. Between 2020 and 2022, annual postings for semiconductor jobs tripled from about 8,000 to almost 25,000, according to a new report, “The challenge of building a regional semiconductor workforce pipeline: What regions can learn from Austin, Texas and an agenda for cross-regional learning” from the Institute for Networked Communities (INC). As noted in the report, analysts expect that between 2023 and 2030, the industry will grow 33%, an increase of 115,000 jobs.

NOTE: The nation's community of technology-based economic development organizations is in its annual report season, and we've already seen several releases from SSTI members. All document TBED's impact on advancing research, moving it to market, and helping businesses improve their profitability and competitiveness.

To help the TBED community prepare their own annual reports, SSTI is speaking with a few of our members to learn more about their evolving approaches to preparing their annual reports. This week, we share insights from our conversation based on an interview with Kate Calabra, interim CEO of the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition. The first three parts of this four-part series are available here, here and here.

In this final coverage of gubernatorial addresses as they discuss the innovation economy, the following highlights have been selected from State of the States or budget addresses given between Feb. 18 and March 14, 2025, by the governors from Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio.  Information on previous 2025 State of the States and/or budget addresses can be found here, here, here, and here.

Quantum technologies are revolutionizing sensors, computation, and communication, according to an article from the World Economic Forum.

This reality is inspiring many states to build foundations for reaping the economic benefits of these technologies. This year, several states, including Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, South Carolina and South Dakota have passed legislation, provided new funding or have launched new quantum initiatives.

After a busy election season that saw gubernatorial elections in 36 states, newly elected and re-elected governors delivered their annual State of the State addresses, kicking off new programs and reviewing the conditions of their states. SSTI reviews the speeches every year and covers news of new developments and initiatives the governors have highlighted as they relate to the innovation economy. New programs are laid out here in the governors own words as excerpts from their State of the State or budget addresses. Not all governors delivered a State of the State, and some that did may not have revealed new innovation-related initiatives and so are not included in our coverage. Common initiatives among the governors that touched on innovation included an emphasis on workforce, education and broadband; water issues for Western governors; and, clean energy.

Chicago has seen 18 percent growth in its technology ecosystem (i.e. technology occupations in technology industries, non-technology occupations in technology industries, and technology occupations in non-technology industries) in the last decade compared to a 1 percent growth in the overall economy, according to the Chicago Tech Effect report from Chicagoland Chamber of Congress and HR&A Advisors. The report might serve as a model for other areas examining the importance of technology in their region’s economy. Chicago’s tech ecosystem employs over 8 percent of the city’s workforce and accounted for 87 percent of new jobs in the area within the last decade, according to the report. “Chicago is fueling upward mobility and greater economic equality,” according to the report, with the median wage in the tech ecosystem 1.5 times higher than the median wage for the overall economy. Further, about 50 percent of tech jobs in Chicago are considered nontraditional (i.e. non-technology occupations in technology industries), which allows a greater number of individuals to participate in the field.  

The Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC) released its 2022 R&D Index earlier this week. The 2022 R&D Index, which is one component of ISTC’s Illinois Innovation Index, assesses Illinois’s capacity for innovation and economic growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The last R&D Index released by ISTC was in 2019.

Among the key findings of the report:

Illinois ranked 10th in the nation in terms of total R&D activity at universities, Federally Funded R&D Centers (FFRDCs), businesses, and other institutions. Statewide R&D activity increased by $1.1 billion between 2018 and 2019, according to NSF data. R&D intensity in Illinois increased between 2018 and 2019 to 2.05 percent.

Illinois companies spent $14.1 billion on R&D and patent production in 2019, while research funding at universities in Illinois was $2.8 billion in FY 2020. These were both considerable increases from previous years. When it comes to industry and university collaboration in FY 2020, there was $169 million spent by businesses in university research, a decrease of $10 million from 2019.

Gov. J.B Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) have announced a new project for interactive broadband mapping and speed test tools that is intended to help expand access to high-speed internet in communities across Illinois. The project entails the creation of the interactive Connect Illinois Broadband Map and the Illinois Broadband Lab. DCEO has partnered with stakeholders including the University of Illinois System, Illinois Innovation Network, and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society for this project.

Indiana and Illinois are two of the most recent states to implement innovation voucher programs, adding another tool to their efforts to increase economic activity among innovators and entrepreneurs.

Innovation vouchers are provided by governments to small businesses and help foster R&D with access to additional funding and resources. Depending on their design, they can incentivize collaboration between firms and public knowledge providers, such as universities and research institutes, and increase accessibility to crucial resources, such as lab space and specialized equipment, that small businesses would otherwise not have access to.

New York City and the state of Illinois have both made moves recently to shift more of their economies to clean energy. Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced a 15-year, $191 million Offshore Wind Vision (OSW) plan to make New York City a leading destination for the offshore wind industry.  Last month, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed sweeping legislation offering new incentives for the adoption of clean energy and aim to move it to 100 percent clean energy by 2050. And Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is looking to use American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money to establish a clean energy investment fund.