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The Senate unanimously confirmed Anne B. Pope of Tennessee as Federal Co-Chairwoman of the Appalachian Regional Commission. Pope currently serves as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.

Lewis D. "Luke" Rich, a vice president and Western New York regional director for Empire State Development Corp., is taking early retirement at the end of the year.

Ellis Rubinstein, former editor of the magazine Science, has been appointed to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences.

At the University of New Mexico, Avi Shama has been named Special Advisor to the President on Economic Development. The new position will encourage, coordinate and promote economic development activities of various UNM units.

Jack Spencer is the new president of the Georgia Biomedical Partnership.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is joining Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) as co-chair of the monthly Congressional Forum on Technology and Innovation.

The need for the creation of high-wage jobs through tech-based economic development continues to grow at a time when many states are finding it increasingly difficult to make the necessary investments to be true players in a knowledge-based economy.

What constitutes high tech employment? Through aggressive marketing of its annual reports, the AEA, formerly known as the American Electronic Association, has captured most of the media's attention around the country. While a very good report, AEA's Cyberstates only reports employment in its member industries, which represents just one-third of the nation's industrial R&D.

Howard Bell is the new executive director of Wayne State University's Research and Technology Park. One of the state's SmartZones, the park was recently named the permanent site for Michigan's $50 Million NextEnergy Center.

Laurence Gebhardt has been selected to serve as the first director of Idaho's TechConnect East.

Howard Bell is the new executive director of Wayne State University's Research and Technology Park. One of the state's SmartZones, the park was recently named the permanent site for Michigan's $50 Million NextEnergy Center.

Laurence Gebhardt has been selected to serve as the first director of Idaho's TechConnect East.

Partisan politics take a back seat when the nation's governors talk about the need for stronger national innovation policies. Ample proof of this is offered policy position statements approved at the two most recent meetings of the Western Governors' Association and the National Governors Association.

The yearly dollar amount of research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit claims grew twice as fast as company and other nonfederally funded R&D expenditures between 1990 and 2001, a new National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief reports. In contrast, direct federal funding for industrial R&D declined through much of the 1990s, both in absolute terms and relative to industry-funded R&D.

As most practitioners know, measuring progress for tech-based economic development efforts can be difficult given the long lead time necessary for most research investments to yield results. Consequently, many programs rely on interim measures to evaluate a policy or program's impact.

Do women shy away from competition? Do men compete too much? In a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER), economists Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund answer yes to both questions after measuring performance and preferences of men and women in a controlled environment.

A community essentially has two options for strategies to diversify its economic base: traditional economic development or technology-based economic development (TBED). The traditional approach of recruiting or inducing companies to relocate to their community from elsewhere creates an atmosphere of competition, rivalry and one-upmanship among cities and regions as they bid to buy firms' location decisions. Often, it is also difficult for small and mid-sized communities to compete on these terms.

Since passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, universities across the country have established transfer technology offices to assist in commercializing academic inventions. Efforts to transfer university inventions to the market continue to be a difficult proposition, with less than a third of disclosed inventions resulting in license. Start-ups garner only one in eight licenses.

Many community and economic development professionals believe the report released last Tuesday should have predated the President's 2006 Budget to consolidate or eliminate 18 federal programs used by most parts of the country to support growth and well-being (see the Feb. 14 issue of the Digest).

Coming off the heels of the state legislature's approval of a new Emerging Technologies Fund (see the June 13 issue of the Digest), Gov. Rick Perry announced last Saturday that Texas would provide a $50 million grant to establish the Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM).

Incubators provide an integral and flexible component of many communities' tech-based economic development efforts. When successful, business incubators can provide a focal point for encouraging entrepreneurship in even the smallest cities and metropolitan areas. Ample evidence is presented in the latest survey of incubators supported through the multifaceted $35 million Entrepreneurship Initiative of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).

For the second year in a row, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) was the most active source of early-stage or angel capital, according to the July issue of Entrepreneur magazine.

In signing the state budget last Thursday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle approved spending $5 million for two new programs supporting agricultural and forestry bio-based industrial development. Bio-based industries convert the carbohydrates in plants into fuels, polymers, fabrics, and other chemicals.

As a precursor to a report expected next month from the President's Commission on Tax Reform, the National League of Cities (NLC) recently issued its findings from a survey citing disapproval of how state and federal tax issues are being handled by the Administration, Congress, and state governors and legislatures. NLC outlined recommendations and called on the federal government to convene a national economic summit to address the issues.

Can patent insurance protect innovations from predators? Yes, particularly if innovators insure their innovation before rivals enter the market, according to Financing and the Protection of Innovators, a discussion paper by Gerard Llobet and Javier Suarez from the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

More than 100 technology clusters may exist in the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) area, but challenges to exploit and nurture the clusters still exist. A new report analyzes the ARC region's concentration of technology resources at a sub-regional level and uncovers localized technology strengths that might be promoted through concentrated economic development policy.