Federal funding for R&D in academic science and engineering fields totaled more than $30 billion in fiscal year 2006, yet it was not enough to outpace inflation, according to data collected by the National Science Foundation (NSF). After adjusting for inflation, the 2.9 percent increase in federally funded academic R&D expenditures in FY 2006 from FY 2005 was actually a 0.1 percent decline.
So far this year, SSTI's Funding Supplement has made its subscribers aware of more than 1,400 different opportunities to secure funding. If you aren't a subscriber, your client companies, academic researchers, and state and local TBED efforts are at a significant disadvantage!
The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. promoted Kevin Carr to the position of chief operations officer.
The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University announced that Jon Fjeld is the executive director of its recently unveiled Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. promoted Kevin Carr to the position of chief operations officer.
The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University announced that Jon Fjeld is the executive director of its recently unveiled Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, College Park named Dan Goodman as its first technology commercialization fellow.
The 82nd Annual Congress of Cities in Charlotte, N.C., elected Jim Hunt, a councilmember of Clarksburg, W.Va., as the new president of the National League of Cities. Hunt follows Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) selected Vicki Loise as its first executive director.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels named Mitch Maurer, president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), as the new state secretary of commerce. Maurer replaces Pat Miller, who stepped down to resume her role as president and CEO of her company, Vera Bradley Designs, Inc.
BioMed SA, a recently founded technology council to promote the development of San Antonio’s health and bioscience community, selected Ann Stevens to serve as its first executive director.
For the better part of the year, lawmakers in Michigan have faced the daunting task of balancing both a budget shortfall for fiscal year 2007 and a nearly $1.6 billion deficit for FY 2008. An agreement between Gov. Jennifer Granholm and lawmakers was reached in the early morning hours of Oct. 31, following a one-month extension of the deadline and a brief government shutdown.
After several months of debate regarding a number of economic development initiatives, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed into law a major economic stimulus bill. However, unhappy with portions of a separate tax break package for businesses, the governor vetoed two of the 10 bills.
Listen or read the business news media and the dreaded “R” word, recession, is back in common parlance. State revenue cycles seem to feel it first. Already, with more than a dozen states projecting budget deficits for both current and coming fiscal years, it seems certain: Spending cuts in programs and services and/or tax increases are imminent. The nationwide housing market slump, the rising cost of energy and health care, and increased state spending are cited as a just a few of the reasons for shortfalls in state budgets.
Although Missouri frequently ranks in the top 20 states for federal research grants and academic R&D, the state consistently ranks much lower in the creation of new high-tech companies. A recent report by Dr. Mark Parry of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Bloch School of Business suggests that early-stage high-tech entrepreneurs and companies have been unable to secure sufficient capital to launch successful ventures.
Three major announcements were made in Singapore last month focusing on R&D of new technologies and educating the workforce to produce specialized graduates in upcoming fields.
One continuing challenge states and regions are attempting to overcome is adjusting their workforces in a rapidly changing, innovation-driven, global economy. The growing consensus emerging from many people examining science and technology competitiveness is that U.S. students need to be academically stronger in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields than they are today and that the supply of graduates with a science background needs to increase.
Nearly 700 new products resulting from university research handled by technology transfer offices reached the marketplace in FY 2006, according to the latest Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) Survey of U.S. Licensing Activity released this week.
The 189 research performing institutions that participated in the survey also reported the creation of 553 start-ups during the year and almost 5,000 new licensing relationships with companies.
During the past year, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has garnered a great deal of attention, setting the stage for a national debate over potential changes to the well known federal program – namely the issue of participation from companies with venture-capital backing. With congressional reauthorization on the horizon for next year, SSTI examined the SBIR program in-depth during a breakout session at the annual conference in October, looking at both current status and future developments.
Edison had Menlo Park. Monet had the gardens at Giverny. Ubiquitous computing had PARC. To what extent were the great things that happened at each of these localities influenced by the places themselves?
Reducing that question to economic development policy terms: Can the places of great creations be created by design?
Building structures that contain laboratory space are becoming an important component of many entities pursuing TBED strategies. Research spaces such as cleanrooms and wetlabs pop up throughout universities, but they also are being constructed within research parks and business incubators.
The theory of spatial clustering has been very popular in the TBED field for many years, as researchers attempt to explain the transformation of places like Silicon Valley and the reasons various locales are economically competitive. Practitioners have utilized the theory as a method to describe their own state and regional economies and to support the development of specific industries. As an industry cluster grows, additional benefits of agglomeration are realized.
The physical layouts of many colleges and universities across North America are undergoing dramatic changes as more and more relationships develop outside of the traditional boundaries of institutions of higher learning. As public-private partnerships are established, additional research parks are being built on or adjacent to campus, and in some cases, empty space is designed into new academic and research buildings to accommodate future spin-off companies and incubating firms.
The establishment and maintenance of research parks has been a strategy for many organizations to strengthen TBED within their regions. This strategy continues to grow, as announcements for new research parks and the expansion of established ones take place all over the U.S. and Canada. But looking at these research parks in aggregate, what can we learn about them? And what can current developments tell us about the design of research parks in the future?
Throughout this special issue of the Digest, we’ve explored how future trends in design may affect how TBED practitioners advance the field and how altering the organization of the physical components around us – from laboratory space to economic development organizations – may impact innovative performance. It seems an emerging field, one that is sought in the design community and one that may be welcomed by the customers of design services, is the practice of evaluating the spaces that are intended to produce innovation.
John Reardon will be new Charles County Economic Development Department chief in Maryland, effective in December.