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James Souby, executive director of the Western Governors' Association for the past 13 years, is resigning to become president and CEO of a new private think tank.

Over the past six years, SSTI has dedicated a portion of the Digest to coverage on the legislative priorities of governors across the nation through the Tech Talkin' Govs series. As they say, talk is cheap. So this year, we are extending that coverage to track how the Governors' proposals fared in the respective legislative sessions.

It could be frustration at the lack of action by the federal government, displeasure with the direction of national policy or a sense of urgency and need, but states are increasingly taking matters into their own hands when it comes to many major issues. Examples abound, including states taking the lead on dealing with global warming, energy policy, health care, food quality assurance, stem cell research, broadband coverage and even foreign trade. Washington Gov.

Successful companies are forced to change business strategies as market realities shift. It happens all of the time. Browse the business section of your local bookstore and you'll see dozens of titles preaching the need for companies to adopt, adapt and innovate. The continuing restructuring of the U.S. durable manufacturing sector, as alluded to in the Useful Stats piece below, is a vivid example of the importance of abandoning old mindsets for industry: change or die.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently published its 2005 estimates of state personal income. According to the release, growth in U.S. per capita income slowed in 2005 increasing 4.6 percent in 2005, down from 5 percent growth in 2004. Regionally, the most significant increases in per capita income accompanied faster population growth, occurring in the Southwest states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

We're not sure how useful these stats really are, but given the political proclivity of so many of our readers and the upcoming gubernatorial elections this fall in 36 states, we thought we'd share a link from SurveyUSA.com presenting the current approval ratings for all 50 governors.

States and regions across the U.S. are continuing to make significant investments and implement policies to capitalize on the growing biosciences sector. However, a challenge they face in coming years is a leveling off of federal bioscience R&D dollars, concludes a recent report prepared by Battelle, SSTI and PMP Consulting.

Despite all the press generated each time a state commits multimillion portions of its tobacco settlement distribution toward R&D and technology-based economic development (TBED), readers may be surprised to learn economic development activities captured only 4 percent of the total payments in 2005, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

For the 12th consecutive year, the University of California tops all universities for the most patents for inventions, according to a list recently released by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office. The preliminary list reveals the top 13 U.S. universities receiving the most utility patents during calendar year 2005. All campuses are included in each school's total.

Increasingly states are making it easier for high school students to participate in college courses while still attending high school. The goal of dual enrollment is to encourage more students to attend college, giving them a leg up on a degree. A new report by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education suggests the efforts are not working in Kentucky.

Using data from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, SSTI has prepared a table presenting business churning statistics and rankings for all 50 states and the District of Columbia for 2004. Business churning, a measure of new firm births and existing firm deaths as a share of total firms (small businesses with employees), is seen as a major driver of innovation and growth.

Ask most state and local technology-based economic development (TBED) professionals what they are trying to accomplish in their community or region and the majority will probably draw on a few of the well-known high tech centers of the country for examples. Many books, studies and reports have scrutinized the success of Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, Austin, etc.

In mid-September, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich unveiled a new approach to economic development in Illinois– regionalism. While several other states currently use or have explored a regionalized approach to delivering state economic development services, the concept is new for Illinois.

At a time when North Carolina is experiencing record-setting layoffs, the dot-com bubble has burst, and traditional industries are undergoing critical changes, North Carolina needs a cohesive, bipartisan economic development strategy that embraces the dynamics underlying the new economy, according to a new report issued by the Institute for Emerging Issues.

Storm prediction, extreme ultraviolet light, clean chemical manufacturing, and implantable electronics for treating incurable diseases — all of the above will be tackled by four new Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) created by the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week. The new centers will receive a $68 million from NSF over the next five years.

Arizona Universities Partner to Create Joint Biomedical Campus

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given us the first peek at the results of the 2001 survey of industrial research and development expenditures and, while the news is better than expected given the economy, the first figures provide further evidence of the struggles of the U.S. manufacturing base. Issue Brief 04-301, U.S.