What constitutes high tech employment? Through aggressive marketing of its annual reports, the AEA, formerly known as the American Electronic Association, has captured most of the media's attention around the country. While a very good report, AEA's Cyberstates only reports employment in its member industries, which represents just one-third of the nation's industrial R&D.
Howard Bell is the new executive director of Wayne State University's Research and Technology Park. One of the state's SmartZones, the park was recently named the permanent site for Michigan's $50 Million NextEnergy Center.
Laurence Gebhardt has been selected to serve as the first director of Idaho's TechConnect East.
Howard Bell is the new executive director of Wayne State University's Research and Technology Park. One of the state's SmartZones, the park was recently named the permanent site for Michigan's $50 Million NextEnergy Center.
Laurence Gebhardt has been selected to serve as the first director of Idaho's TechConnect East.
Chuck Henderson has announced he will retire as president of the University of Nebraska's 130-acre Technology Park next June.
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack announced that the Director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, C.J. Niles, will be stepping down effective December 31. Mary Lawyer, the department's chief of staff, will serve as interim director.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Anne B. Pope of Tennessee as Federal Co-Chairwoman of the Appalachian Regional Commission. Pope currently serves as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.
Lewis D. "Luke" Rich, a vice president and Western New York regional director for Empire State Development Corp., is taking early retirement at the end of the year.
Ellis Rubinstein, former editor of the magazine Science, has been appointed to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences.
At the University of New Mexico, Avi Shama has been named Special Advisor to the President on Economic Development. The new position will encourage, coordinate and promote economic development activities of various UNM units.
Jack Spencer is the new president of the Georgia Biomedical Partnership.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is joining Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) as co-chair of the monthly Congressional Forum on Technology and Innovation.
Partisan politics take a back seat when the nation's governors talk about the need for stronger national innovation policies. Ample proof of this is offered policy position statements approved at the two most recent meetings of the Western Governors' Association and the National Governors Association.
The yearly dollar amount of research and experimentation (R&E) tax credit claims grew twice as fast as company and other nonfederally funded R&D expenditures between 1990 and 2001, a new National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief reports. In contrast, direct federal funding for industrial R&D declined through much of the 1990s, both in absolute terms and relative to industry-funded R&D.
As most practitioners know, measuring progress for tech-based economic development efforts can be difficult given the long lead time necessary for most research investments to yield results. Consequently, many programs rely on interim measures to evaluate a policy or program's impact.
Do women shy away from competition? Do men compete too much? In a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER), economists Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund answer yes to both questions after measuring performance and preferences of men and women in a controlled environment.
A community essentially has two options for strategies to diversify its economic base: traditional economic development or technology-based economic development (TBED). The traditional approach of recruiting or inducing companies to relocate to their community from elsewhere creates an atmosphere of competition, rivalry and one-upmanship among cities and regions as they bid to buy firms' location decisions. Often, it is also difficult for small and mid-sized communities to compete on these terms.
Since passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, universities across the country have established transfer technology offices to assist in commercializing academic inventions. Efforts to transfer university inventions to the market continue to be a difficult proposition, with less than a third of disclosed inventions resulting in license. Start-ups garner only one in eight licenses.
More than 100 technology clusters may exist in the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) area, but challenges to exploit and nurture the clusters still exist. A new report analyzes the ARC region's concentration of technology resources at a sub-regional level and uncovers localized technology strengths that might be promoted through concentrated economic development policy.
Economic growth in a regional economy can be positively linked to an increase in intensity of industry R&D, according to recent research by Marios Zachariadis of Louisiana State University. R&D, Innovation, and Technological Progress: A Test of the Schumpeterian Framework without Scale Effects, released in September 2002, establishes a connection among R&D intensity, patenting, technological change and economic growth.
Manufacturing jobs in rural Minnesota numbered almost 120,000 in 2000, a 25 percent increase since 1990, according to a recent study by the Center for Rural Policy and Development and Minnesota Technology Inc., two agencies dedicated to helping industry in Greater Minnesota.
Universities should revamp how they evaluate S&T teaching, report says
Two independent surveys of venture capital investments made during the third quarter of FY 2002 suggest the downward trends in the flow of money and number of VC placements will continue.
Competition Canceled in Florida
Many community and economic development professionals believe the report released last Tuesday should have predated the President's 2006 Budget to consolidate or eliminate 18 federal programs used by most parts of the country to support growth and well-being (see the Feb. 14 issue of the Digest).