Search

The Employment and Training Administration has published the availability of up to $100 million for Trade and Economic Transition National Dislocated Worker Grants (DWGs), with funding amounts of up to $8 million for each award.

In an executive order issued last month, President Trump wrote that the nation is facing a skills crisis. In response, and in order to develop “a national strategy to ensure that America’s students and workers have access to affordable, relevant, and innovative education and job training that will equip them to compete and win in the global economy,” the president established a National Council for the American Worker.

Each year, the National Science Foundation releases a report on Science and Engineering Indicators, a voluminous compilation of data and analysis that looks at metrics which are particularly relevant to the field of technology-based economic development.

Over the last decade, accelerators have spread from a Silicon Valley phenomenon to communities across the country. Questions, however, remain on their impact on startups and whether they aid in creating a strong startup ecosystem. In How Do Accelerators Impact High-Technology Ventures?, Sandy Yu from UC-Berkeley found that the accelerator process helps resolve uncertainty around company quality sooner than what is experienced by non-accelerator companies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released updated Science and Engineering (S&E) State Profiles – an online portal that provides state-level rankings and totals of S&E data for the 50 states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The portal also provides a data tool that allows users to compare up to seven states or download entire data sets. In the most recent update, NSF allows user to explore data for the years 2015 to 2017. S&T indicator by state include, but are not limited to:

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), USDA, is announcing the I-FAST prize competition to develop and implement the Innovations in Food and Agricultural Science and Technology (I-FAST) program. NIFA will partner with NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) to provide entrepreneurship training to NIFA grantees under this pilot program. The goals are to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from NIFA supported academic research. Over six months, the selected teams will learn what it will take to achieve an economic impact with their particular innovation.

The 36|86 Entrepreneurship Festival, being held Aug. 29-30 in Nashville and powered by Launch Tennessee, is one of the Southeast's largest gathering of entrepreneurs, innovators, VCs and ecosystem builders. Join your peers to hear from Fortune 500 leaders, startup founders, and top VC's from around the country. Agenda highlights include impact investing, opportunity zones, startup ecosystems done right and going to market right the first time.

North Carolina and Tennessee are implementing new initiatives to get students in their states the help they need to either complete degrees or training that will help improve workforce development in those states. North Carolina’s governor recently added a new line of grants dubbed “Finish Line” grants, to help students that are struggling with non-academic problems complete community college.

In last week’s Digest, SSTI looked at several macro venture capital (VC) trends, this week’s Useful Stats article focuses on regional trends as well as provides downloadable VC stats by state by quarter from Q1 of 2016 to Q2 of 2018. The data includes median VC deal size, VC deals, and VC dollars invested.

After 20 years of a program that had supported innovation in the state of Kentucky, the governor said he wanted to consolidate the funding to support entrepreneurs and become more strategic in the state’s efforts.

The U.S. Department of Energy has launched a new Lab Partnering Service (LPS) that provides an online, single access point platform for investors, innovators and institutions to identify, locate and obtain information on the department’s 17 national laboratories. The new tool is intended to provide industry with a more efficient way to harness technical expertise and intellectual property housed at DOE’s labs.

Help inform decisions on the direction of federal R&D's role in innovation! Please complete this 10-minute survey by July 25 to share your ideas of current and future practices affecting R&D direction and tech transfer options with the federal labs.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has announced its 2018 road tour connecting entrepreneurs with next generation R&D ideas to early stage funding led by the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Each stop in the 18-state road tour will be hosted by a local organization, and program managers from the 11 participating federal agencies will conduct one-on-one meetings with attendees, take part in targeted panels, and share insights into how their agencies make funding decisions.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest survey of more than 1,000 experts and decision makers on the likelihood and impact of 30 global risks over a 10-year period found four areas of concern: environmental degradation; cybersecurity breaches; economic strains; and geopolitical tensions. Despite experiencing a year-long global economic recovery, the survey revealed that respondents are pessimistic about the year ahead (59 percent say they expect an increase in risk for the year, compared to 7 percent who expect declining risks).

For hundreds of years, libraries have helped drive American innovation by serving as a trusted resource and providing information to a wide range of individuals. As libraries continue to implement their own initiatives in this space, policymakers across the country have recently turned to them as a way to level the playing field around workforce development and entrepreneurial support.

The tax law signed at the end of last year introduced a provision that will significantly affect many economic development offices and related nonprofits across the country: “contributions to capital” will now typically be included in a corporate taxpayer’s gross income. Previously, grants, free land and certain types of tax credits from governmental units or civic groups to support capital expenses were tax-free awards for the beneficiary. Since the signing of the bill, many of these awards are now taxable.

Three recent news items shed important light on educational attainment and economic well-being and one promising approach to increasing educational attainment among lower income people. While the Pew Research Center finds the share of college-educated young adults in the U.S. workforce is higher than ever before, the Economist reports that the “return on investment” in getting a college degree is leveling off.