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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.

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.

Earlier this month Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell announced a broad state strategy to improve the state’s energy independence, support alternative energy business, and reduce the state’s environmental impact. The key element of the new state plan is an $850 million Energy Independence Fund, designed to reduce energy costs for consumers and shift the state’s usage toward clean and renewable sources. Gov. Rendell hopes the plan will save Pennsylvania consumers $10 billion over the next 10 years by lowering energy costs and reducing consumption.

 

Energy giant BP has announced that the University of California at Berkeley, in partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will receive a total of $500 million to host a research center dedicated to developing biofuel technologies. The Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) will conduct both basic and applied biological research relevant to energy. BP and the university plan to launch research programs this summer.

 

A recent study completed for the Small Business Administration (SBA) concludes that small business establishment births are the single-largest determinant of the growth rate of gross state product (GSP), state personal income, and total state employment using data from the years 1988-2002. The authors contend state efforts to promote the creation of small businesses will generate more economic growth then any other policy option included in their models.

Rapid growth in the number of international patents filed by northeast Asian nations during 2006 has resulted in a shift of positions for the top-performing nations, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). With 34.1 percent, the U.S. maintained its global dominance with 49,555 patent filings. The figure represents an increase of 6.1 percent over America’s 2005 total; the U.S. rate of growth is slower than the 6.4 percent growth in total world filings.

 

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in partnership with the Richard Florida Creativity Group (RFCG), recently announced the formation of the Knight Creative Communities Initiative in three metropolitan areas of the country: Charlotte; Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wisc.; and, Tallahassee. The goal of the initiative, utilizing Dr. Florida’s theories on the importance of creativity and innovation for economic growth, is to produce through community dialogue a vision to enhance each region’s environment for ingenuity.

Increasing federal funding for life science research is one of the most significant ingredients for improving a state’s position in building a strong biotech and biomedical sector. As appropriations for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were increasing annually – as they did in the last half of the 1990s and the first few years of this decade – this was not a zero-sum game. All states could win.

 

This is the fourth installment of SSTI’s look at the Inaugural, Budget and State of the State Addresses delivered in the past week. Earlier installments, published Jan. 29, Jan. 15 and Jan. 8, are available through: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/2007/headlines07.htm

 

Selected excerpts of the most recent batch of speeches are provided below:

 

Connecticut