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As the 2015-2016 academic year comes to a close, universities and their industry partners have announced several new university-industry partnerships to leverage university research capabilities to address industry needs. Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Rolls-Royce, and several pharma companies have agreed to commit millions of dollars to support these partnerships targeted at increasing the pace of scientific discovery as well as training the next generation of STEM professionals.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the 2016 Growth Accelerator Fund competition. In its third year, the SBA will commit up to $3.95 million for accelerators and other entrepreneurial ecosystem models to compete for monetary prizes of $50,000 each. This year, the SBA will partner with several other federal agencies – NIH, NSF, Department of Education, and USDA – to provide additional prizes to accelerators that assist entrepreneurs with submitting proposals for the Small Business Innovation (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Applications must be submitted by June 3.

Wells Fargo & Company released a five-year, company-wide corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy that includes significant commitments to inclusion, innovation, small business lending, and community investment. Its 2020 social commitment will target three commitment areas – diversity and social inclusion; economic empowerment; and, economic sustainability.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that they are seeking proposals for a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute, a part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). The $70 million Modular Chemical Process Intensification Institute will focus on developing breakthrough technologies that increase the energy efficiency of manufacturing processes used across an array of U.S. industries.

A new report from the Lumina Foundation finds the U.S. is making progress in the number of Americans holding high-quality credentials beyond high school diplomas. For the seventh straight year, the percentage of the country’s working age population (age 25-64 years) with a quality post-secondary credential increased, reaching 45.3 percent in 2014. Even with the progress that has been made, however, the U.S.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last month the availability of more than $11 million in grants to support rural broadband through its Community Connect grant program, which seeks to help fund broadband deployment into rural communities where it is not yet economically viable for private sector providers to deliver service. For FY 2016, the minimum grant amount is $100,000, while the maximum award is $3 million.

Vice President Joe Biden announced a $100 million competition to expand tuition-free community college programs that connect young Americans to in-demand jobs. To support a growing trend of free community college programs, America’s Promise Job-Driven Training grants (America’s Promise Grants) will provide federal funding for the creation and expansion of regional and sector partnerships between community colleges, local industries, other training providers, employers, and, the public workforce system targeted at in-demand middle and high-skilled jobs across the country.

While the first quarter of 2016 was slow for venture capital investments in the United Kingdom (UK), recent weeks have seen significant new developments in both financing and converting technologies from six UK universities into the marketplace.  The goal of these new funding initiatives is, in part, to improve the survival rate of small- and medium-sized businesses (only 45 percent of all UK startups survive beyond the first five years).

To mark the 10th anniversary of the SSTI Excellence in TBED awards program, we have made some exciting changes to the categories. Since last year, we have combined some categories with the intent of better reflecting the ever-evolving field of tech-based economic development and added a new category to reflect burgeoning activity in a new area.

SSTI’s 2016 Annual Conference is November 1-3 in Columbus, Ohio. The agenda will cover the entire innovation ecosystem, including accessing capital, supporting entrepreneurs, developing clusters and expanding R&D. We would appreciate your help identifying specific session topics. Provide your input by responding to this brief survey by May 18—and you will be entered to win a free registration for an SSTI webinar. Take the survey...

Are you interested in influencing the design and development of national policy solutions to challenges in the innovation economy? The U.S. Department of Commerce is seeking applications for membership on the prestigious National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), which advises the secretary on fundamental issues affecting state, regional and university based innovation initiatives.

Todd Connor, CEO of Bunker Labs, begins his pitch in front of a Startup Week event in Columbus, Ohio with a compelling statistic. In the six years following WWII, 50 percent of returning veterans started their own businesses. Today, only 6 percent of post-9/11 vets do the same, despite surveys showing four times that number would like to do so.  What has changed to lead to such a contrast and entrepreneurship gap?

The latest Angel Resource Institute (ARI) survey of returns for nearly 250 angel investments reveals the number of projects failing to breakeven during their liquidity events is up sharply since before the Great Recession – nearly 35 percent more are losing money for their angels than ARI found in a 2007 survey.  In 2007, 52 percent of liquidity events failed to reach 1x, while that figure has grown to 70 percent in 2016. Add to that, angel investors are holding companies in their portfolios 12 months longer on average, 4.5 years in 2016, than they did in the first study.

Because they focus on attracting mature firms through relocation incentives, job creation strategies at the state level are often misguided, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Despite this, many metropolitan regions are increasingly focusing their efforts on attracting and retaining the high-growth firms responsible for an oversized share of job growth and economic output. While considerable research has focused on the important role that startups and high-growth firms play in the national economy, relatively little has been done to apply a regional lens to this phenomenon. New research, tracks high-growth firms over a multiple-year period to assess how their changing operations can inform regional economic development.

A mixture of success and trepidation accompanied 2016 legislation introduced in  several states to create, extend, or recapitalize angel tax credit programs. While legislation in Arizona’s legislature failed due to a lack of support, angel tax credit bills in Kansas and Tennessee passed easily with broad support from their governors, lawmakers, and the public. In North Dakota, the state’s angel tax credit program faces an unclear future due to concerns about transparency and oversight. To stimulate investments in West Virginia’s startup community, Gov.

In Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — a New York Times bestseller by Michael Lewis from 2003 – the author focuses on the successful approach of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Oakland Athletics and its general manager Billy Beane’s use of an analytical, evidence-based, sabermetric approach to assemble a competitive baseball team. Conventional wisdom of the time focused on traditional scouting and non-advanced statistics.

As the water crisis in Flint, MI, continues to capture headlines, details on potential relief efforts are beginning to emerge. In January, President Obama granted $5 million in emergency funding to address the crisis, while the state has approved $67 million in funding since October.

Startup accelerators, which began emerging in 2005 with the launch of Y-Combinator, generally share three characteristics: they tend to be limited in duration; work with cohorts of early stage entrepreneurs; and, aim to facilitate connections with potential investors.

Last week, the Department of Defense announced the launch of the eighth institute in the National Network of Manufacturing and Innovation (NNMI) in Cambridge, MA. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will spearhead the consortium of 89 manufacturers, universities and nonprofits to develop new technologies around fiber and textiles manufacturing. Alongside the launch, the White House released a new report highlighting the administration’s advanced manufacturing priorities and how federal funding is being used to support strategic technologies.

Many states across the country already have, or will soon have, signed budgets ready for the 2017 fiscal year.  Over the past few months, SSTI has examined gubernatorial addresses and proposed budgets for a preview of technology-based economic development spending in the coming year. This week, we take a look at what initiatives and spending levels survived spending negotiations in New York, South Dakota, Wyoming.

To drive state competitiveness and job creation, Indiana and Mississippi announced new efforts to engage regional institutions of higher education and other organizations to provide workers with the skills that match the needs of existing industry as well as attract new business and industry to their state. Through the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD), the state will commit $22 million to fund industry-led regional partnerships aimed at aligning education and workforce needs. Mississippi Gov.

The U.S. venture capital (VC) industry continued a gradual deflation in activity in Q1 2016, even as capital invested remained at a historically robust level according to Pitchbook’s 1Q 2016 U.S. Venture Industry Report. In Q1 2016, the VC industry also continued the trend of massive late-stage VC rounds with $9.4 billion of $17.7 billion invested in late-stage financing.

SSTI is excited to announce the 2016 SSTI Excellence in TBED awards program. For the last nine years, SSTI has recognized initiatives that greatly impact state and regional economies a national competition showcasing effective and innovative approaches to building tech-based economies. To mark the program’s 10th anniversary, we will be announcing several changes to the program the next couple weeks – so stay tuned!

In this week’s Digest, we wanted to highlight several of the key dates for the 2016 competition:

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) released a notice of intent to establish a Modular Chemical Process Intensification Institute for Clean Energy Manufacturing –the fourth National Manufacturing Innovation Institute sponsored by the Department of Energy.

Massachusetts legislators are debating the future of Gov. Charlie Baker’s $918 million economic development proposal, including investments in local infrastructure, emerging technologies, community-based innovation, brownfields cleanup, Gateway Cities development and workforce development. The proposal would implement several of the action items from Baker’s economic strategic plan, issued last November, over the next five years.