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Concerns over national security have prompted the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) to force international investors to divest from two American tech startups, a move that will affect entrepreneurs and investors alike, according to a recent article by from Jeff Farrah of the National Venture Capital Association.

As the technology behind renewable energy continues to advance, recent research finds that the public sector plays an important role in catalyzing innovation. This can be seen in three main ways: by funding basic research on renewable energy in all 50 states; by partnering with cleantech startups; and by supporting cleantech clusters through networks, commercialization assistance, and access to capital. Taken together, this recent research suggests that public-sector partnerships can complement industry’s role in growing the green economy at the federal, state and local levels.

State funding for higher education has only halfway recovered in the 10 years since the Great Recession, according to a recent State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report. The report also found that while higher education funding is stabilizing, the shift to greater reliance on tuition as a revenue source has leveled off, but remains higher than since before the Great Recession.

The IRS released its long-anticipated second tranche of rules on Wednesday, and the regulations provide some clarity around using Opportunity Zones to invest in businesses. Specific examples include details on defining a business’ operations within a zone and funds’ ability to reinvest proceeds. However, further clarification is needed, including around investors’ treatment of interim sales, and additional changes are forthcoming.

The Oakland-based Kapor Center, a nonprofit focused on leveling the playing field in tech, has announced the Tech Done Right (TDR) Challenge with funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With an emphasis on growing opportunities for women and people of color in the sector, the challenge will fund organizations with innovative solutions to building diverse, inclusive, and thriving tech ecosystems. Awardees will receive one-time grants beginning at $100,000.

Two community colleges in Florida became the winners of the 2019 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, which recognizes high achievement and performance among America’s community colleges. Winners were Indian River State College (IRSC) ($350,000) in Fort Pierce, Florida, and Miami Dade College ($350,000) in Miami; Odessa College and Palo Alto College in Texas and Pierce College in Washington were named as Rising Stars ($100,000 each).

Seven regional innovation cluster (RIC) initiatives have each been awarded $500,000 from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Although the SBA has yet to publish an official press release indicating the release of the 2019 Regional Innovation Cluster awardees, SSTI identified the awardees through other sources, such as USASpending.gov and a review of local news media. Read on for more information on the program’s awardees.

The trend of fewer, larger deals that emerged over the past few years continued through the first quarter of 2019, according to newly released data from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. U.S. activity in the quarter included $32.6 billion of capital investment on 1,853 deals, making it the second-highest quarterly capital investment total in the last decade.

This week SSTI wraps up this year’s coverage of innovation-related initiatives covered in governors’ state of the state and budget addresses. This week Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was the last governor to deliver a state of the state address in 2019, and he used his time to highlight the state’s surplus, a first since he has been in office. The governor is taking advantage of the new financial security to focus on funding for basics such as teacher pay and education among other things.

Innovation initiatives are seeing increased funding in some states as legislatures across the country begin to finalize budget bills and other legislation. SSTI continues to monitor these developments and this week we cover budget bills in Idaho that saw small increases to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program, as well as increases in the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and STEM Action Center, and new funding for a computer science initiative. South Dakota will see an increase in funding for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and West Virginia passed bills creating an SBIR/STTR matching grant program, support for community and technical college tuition assistance, expansion of broadband service, and other innovation-related initiatives in its budget that passed earlier in March.

While the overall Chinese economy may be facing a slowdown, the venture capital (VC) market continues to report strong growth and became the second largest VC market by total capital invested in 2018, according to a new report from PitchBook.

Many people have noticed that the Opportunity Zones tax incentive, intended to encourage investments in economically-distressed areas, lacks the type of reporting requirements that could help determine the real impacts of the incentive. Kresge Foundation is one organization that has been concerned by this information gap and has been working to implement solutions. The ultimate impact of Kresge’s latest effort is to provide further investor incentives in exchange for reporting compliance.

The U.S. unemployment rate is near its 50-year low, but the portion of the population in the labor force is also near a 40-year low.

University-based economic development practitioners seeking to improve their relationships with urban areas have a new resource guide available to them, thanks to research from the Thriving Cities Lab at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

A recent article from Pew Charitable Trusts shows how routine evaluations can help states make tangible improvements to their tax incentives. According to Pew, 30 states now have laws requiring evaluation of the incentives, and recent examinations in several states included key components that helped to inform the results. When analyses started with an effort to determine the specific goals of each incentive, their effectiveness was more easily determined.

If you are feeling that your money is not buying as much as it used to, that delinquent crime may be increasing as teenagers sit idle, that there is not enough focus on climate change or that corporate responsibility may be lacking, you may validate those feelings through the findings of several recently released research papers. SSTI received notice of the conclusions of five working papers that we thought we’d share.

The Trade War is increasing U.S prices, declines in real income.

NSF is inviting interested parties to participate in a new endeavor, the Convergence Accelerator Pilot (NSF C-Accel). The NSF C-Accel Pilot seeks to accelerate use-inspired convergence research in areas of national importance by facilitating convergent team-building capacity around exploratory, potentially high-risk proposals.

A smattering of recent opinion polls and research papers looking to the future have revealed some grim perceptions about the economy and environment, but a more positive opinion of the role for science and technology (S&T) emerges.

This week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $70 million for a Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute to develop technologies that will advance U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, energy efficiency, and innovation. This institute will focus on early-stage research for advancing cybersecurity in energy efficient manufacturing.

Outside of the private sector, colleges and universities perform the vast majority of R&D in the United States – but where do these funds come from? An SSTI analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF NCSES) finds that, across the country, the federal government was the source of more than half (53.5 percent) of all R&D performed at colleges and universities in 2017. Institutional funds (25.1 percent), nonprofit organizations (6.8 percent), businesses (5.9 percent), state and local governments (5.6 percent), and other sources (3.0 percent) comprised the remaining sources of higher education R&D funding. The interactive chart below shows the breakdown of funding sources for research and development at colleges and universities for each state.

In an effort to inform grassroots economic development in rural communities and small- and mid-sized cities, a new report from the Upjohn Institute identifies collaborative strategies that do not necessarily rely on government funding or philanthropic gifts.

Over the six-year period from 2013 to 2018, as total venture capital investments nearly tripled, growing from $47.5 billion in 2013 to nearly $131 billion in 2014, the number of deals increased by just 13.5 percent according to new data from the NVCA-PitchBook Venture Capital Monitor. The $131 billion in total VC investments in 2018 is the largest amount since PitchBook began tracking the data in 2006 and the first year since the height of the dot-com boom that annual capital investment eclipsed $100 billion.

Both female-founded startups and female investors have seen slow progress over the past 10 years, and still face an uphill battle for equality in the venture capital industry. While the deal count for companies founded solely by women has more than quadrupled since 2008, the share of venture dollar invested has remained nearly flat, hovering around 2.0 percent over the same time, according to PitchBook.

One of the most important economic development issues facing communities across the country, especially those reliant on family-owned manufacturing firms, may sometimes fly under the radar: succession planning. A robust study from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois-Chicago combines qualitative (literature review, survey, and interviews) and quantitative analyses (economic impact report) to shed light on this issue, with a focus on the Chicago metropolitan area.

EDA is currently soliciting proposals for $23.5 million in Regional Innovation Strategies (i6 Challenge and Seed Fund Support), and submissions are due April 4. For those looking for more information, EDA’s website contains profiles of all past awardees, and SSTI has a collection of past webinars, including the informational webinar for the current opportunity.