SSTI Digest

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced a new funding opportunity through the Regional Innovation Cluster (RIC) Program. The program is designed to enable new RICs to assist small businesses in matching innovative technologies to industry needs, with the aim of reshoring critical industrial and manufacturing capabilities, securing domestic supply chains, and spurring job creation.

SBA is interested in competitive offers from organizations with relevant partnerships and small business expertise in critical industries, including: 

After the tremendous learning and community-building experience at SSTI’s conference last December at the beautiful Sheraton at Wild Horse Pass in Arizona, many people are looking forward to our next gathering. We are too, but have decided to postpone the event until next year with dates to be determined.

As most readers likely know, staging conferences of the size and complexity of SSTI’s last one takes months of planning. A critical first step is securing the appropriate site. Given the continued uncertainty in the federal economic development and R&D funding landscape that many likely conference participants are navigating, we were not comfortable committing SSTI to an expensive hotel contract for a 2025 event. 

The Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, first established in 2017 with a ten-year lifespan, has been made permanent in Public Law No: 119-21. As noted in a July 10 Digest article recapping the reconciliation package, OZ has undergone significant revisions

Massachusetts’ Gov. Maura Healey recently proposed a multi-year funding strategy (Five-Year Massachusetts Capital Investment Plan (CIP) [FYs 2026-2030] that  would include investment of $890.4 million, including general obligation bonds and private sector contributions, for many of the state’s TBED and innovation initiatives (programs are outlined below). If approved by the state legislature, the package would also provide capital funding resources to implement the Mass Leads Act passed last fall (see this Digest article for more information).

Vaccine and therapeutics storage and delivery may never be the same as Emory University and Micron Biomedical recently announced the first clinical trial of a novel rotavirus vaccine, CC24, delivered via dissolvable microarray technology. This clinical trial was the first clinical evaluation of any drug or vaccine delivered via patch or microarray that is sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

As policymakers consider how to invest limited dollars to stimulate R&D across the U.S. while other countries increase their investments, it’s important to examine whether newer regional policy approaches have the potential to increase national competitiveness versus traditional individual programs. For example, should programs such as EDA Tech Hubs and NSF Engines—both of which are designed to stimulate greater innovation results from existing, strengthened and new assets within more geographic areas across the country—be continued or even expanded? Would networked, regionally oriented innovation policies increase collaboration and accelerate economic growth?

July 29
3:00 p.m. EDT
Free

Please join us for the Innovation Finance subcommunity meeting where we will discuss Innovation Finance 101. This meeting is intended to be the first in a series of foundational conversations on innovation finance and will focus on the terminology, process, and structure of venture capital investment. Register here. 

August 12
2:00 p.m. EDT
Free

The Lab-to-Market subcommunity meeting occurs every 2nd Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time)

The August discussion will focus on the national and regional ecosystems for moving technologies out of the laboratory to create new products, companies, and jobs. Come prepared to share about initiatives in your region: What’s working and what’s not? How have you worked around bottlenecks in the process? Register here.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) recently announced that it is awarding Fordham University $3 million from its Greenlight Innovation Fund. The university will also receive additional funds, including a $1.1 million grant from Councilman Oswald Feliz, to create the Bronx Green Job Center (BGJC), a workforce development and entrepreneurship hub that aims to create an equitable green-job pipeline in the Bronx. BGJC’s programs and services are expected to support workforce development initiatives in the green economy. Its workforce development programs are set to launch in the Fall of 2026.

The overlap between applicants and recipients of the three large regional innovation approaches attempted by the federal government so far continues with the July 9, 2025, NSF narrowing of the field for the second NSF Regional Innovation Engines competition to 29 semifinalists across the country. Predominantly with teams led by universities and university affiliates (25 of the 29 selections), the contenders include 17 NSF Engines Development Awards teams who received two-year planning grants in 2023 and early 2024 that they leveraged to help build coalitions and refine visions for dynamic innovation ecosystems within their regions. It also includes regions that have served as EDA Tech Hubs designees, Tech Hub winners, and recipients of Building Better Regions Phase I and/or Phase II awards.

Seventy-one teams engaged in this round of the competition. One may view a map of the 29 new NSF Engines semifinalists here.

Please note: this article is not intended as a comprehensive review of Public Law No. 119-21, nor should our reading of the law be treated as tax or legal advice.

Now that the dust has settled on the federal budget reconciliation package, Public Law No: 119-21, SSTI presents to its Digest readership our look at the legislation from a technology-based economic development (TBED) perspective. The process nuances, potential fiscal impacts, and broad policy changes of the 870-page act have been extensively covered elsewhere, so we won’t rehash those here. Instead, we will focus on a few key highlights of changes to the tax code and what those could mean for TBED activities.

Over the past 40 years, many people involved in SBIR and empirical analysts in the research, finance, and technology sectors have said SBIR awardees, as a group, are uniquely important for America’s innovation goals. Research presented in a recent NBER working paper provides further evidence backing up those claims and reveals SBIR companies may be preferable for innovation productivity and efficiency—particularly for advancing strategic national, social and environmental goals—to innovation-oriented companies simply backed by venture capital, the finance instrument most often tracked for evidence of innovation success or progress.

SSTI has updated its Key Technology Area Investment Data Tool with new and refreshed data spanning January 1, 2013, through June 30, 2025. The tool comprises two interactive visuals and uses Pitchbook technology verticals selected to align with many of the key technology focus areas (KTFAs) defined in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS). The tool breaks down the number of investment-backed companies, investment deals, and amount of capital invested by each state, year (2013-2025H1), and investment stage (e.g., seed, angel, venture).

For this update, data through June 30, 2025, were downloaded on July 1, 2025, and built into the provided visualizations on the data tool webpage.

Note that because many investment deals are not subject to disclosure, it is difficult to immediately identify investment activity, often leading to data for more recent years being less complete. This potential for incomplete data is a critical issue to consider when exploring data from the first half of 2025 and other recent periods.