In addition to the recent announcement of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Incubator program, several other countries announced initiatives that will provide financial and other resources to support innovation incubator and accelerator programs that help cultivate new tech startups and increase economic growth. Nations that made recent announcements include Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
About 74 percent of U.S. residents with a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields are not employed in STEM occupations, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. While STEM graduates are less likely to be unemployed, they generally find careers outside of science and technology.
Over the next three years, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) plans to hold open competitions for MEP center cooperative agreements in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The process will begin with a demonstration program this summer, in which competitions will be held in six to 10 states in each of MEP’s six regions.
As Congress continues negotiations over the FY15 federal budget, SSTI is hard at work trying to secure additional funding for the Regional Innovation program. The Regional Innovation Program was authorized under the American COMPETES Act and is designed to provide funding to support regional innovation activities. The Senate has approved $20 million for the program for FY2015, while the House did not provide any funding for the program. SSTI has prepared a support letter to Congressional leaders and is seeking organizations to sign on to the letter.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the creation of the Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, a 100-member public-private partnership between public research universities, private sector companies, and other research partners to develop next generation of materials and processes used in the manufacturing of wide band gap semiconductors.
As the outlook for general revenue funds improves in many states, governors are looking to boost investment in higher education and STEM as a means for growing the economy and enhancing the workforce. Universities' economic return to states can be quite impactful.
The European Union is investing € 15 billion ($20.5 billion) over the next two years toward the Horizon2020 project, an initiative designed to boost Europe's knowledge-driven economy, increase global competitiveness, and address key societal challenges. The European Commission has declared funding priorities for the project and opened submissions for the 2014 budget.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced more than $715 million in funding for 824 projects across the state as part of the third round of funding for the Regional Economic Development Councils initiative. Established in 2011 to improve the business climate statewide, the 10 regional councils support projects tailored to maximize resources and competitive advantages.
Battelle Memorial Institute and R&D Magazine have released their annual Global Funding Forecast, an assessment of global political and economic impacts on worldwide industrial research. The report notes that although global R&D spending by leading countries has remained virtually unchanged since the Great Recession, the flows of innovation research have changed substantially.
A record number of U.S. students received doctorates in 2012, according to new data from the National Science Foundation. For the first time, the number of doctoral recipients broke 50,000, with a final tally of 51,008. Total doctorates awarded grew by 4.3 percent over the previous year, the largest increase since 2007 and a significant improvement from the previous four years in which the numbers remains fairly steady.
In a report letter to the president this week, the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) advocated the expansion of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to boost U.S. competitiveness, STEM learning and economic mobility. PCAST recommends that the federal government avoid setting technology standards for these programs at this point, as online education is still in its infancy. Instead, they call for accrediting bodies to become more flexible in response to educational innovation and institutions to improve their sharing of effective practices.
Federal investment in research and development appears to be falling far short of the ambitious goals set by Presidents Bush and Obama in the early part of the century. Though federal R&D spending grew by 22.5 percent from fiscal years 2002 to 2012, commitments declined substantially in 2011-12, following the spike in funding through the Recovery Act. By 2012, R&D expenditures were at their lowest levels since 2004.
Observing that legacy policies have hampered the contribution of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories to the modern innovation economy, Brookings Institution authors Scott Andes, Mark Muro and Matthew Stepp outline a plan to engage DOE labs with regional technology clusters. The authors recommend tasking the labs with an explicit regional economic development mission, as well as opening regionally oriented microlabs that would provide a front door for smaller businesses to access lab resources.
A new statewide network will coordinate the regional economic development activities of Indiana University, according to an announcement released by the university this week. The Innovate Indiana Network will complement the work done by the Innovate Indiana initiative and the university's Council for Regional Engagement and Economic Development (CREED). The network will include representatives from 16 schools, offices and centers across the state that offer services that could potentially benefit regional economies.
A recent report from the U.S. Department of Commerce highlights university programs across the country working to facilitate student and faculty entrepreneurship as part of a larger federal effort to improve tech transfer activities and external partnerships. Information was collected from the leaders of 131 research universities to understand what universities are doing programmatically and strategically to nurture innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship.
Growth in the number of patent assertions facing startup companies is hampering U.S. venture capital, according to a new survey of venture capitalists (VC) and venture-backed companies from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Robin Feldman, director of the Institute for Innovation Law at University of California Hastings. Eighty percent of VC respondents note that the number of patent assertions filed against portfolio companies have increased over the past five years, with half indicating these assertions were a major deterrent to investment.
A measure to increase the sales tax in Jackson County, MO, to fund medical research across Kansas City and St. Louis was rejected by greater than a 5-to-1 ratio, reports the Kansas City Star.
This week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a wide-ranging roundup of new and ongoing efforts to leverage availability of large, accessible data sets to spur innovation. While many of these efforts were focused on supporting research on the potential of big data, several agency efforts are using the model of open data app competitions to fuel private-sector business creation.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has made a series of announcements over the past few weeks aimed at improving the high-tech skill set of the state's workers and students. A new STEM strategic plan released yesterday would refine Massachusetts' efforts to expand the pipeline of young, skilled science and technology workers and improve the quality of STEM education.
Fresh off a nationwide listening tour and against the backdrop of 1776, a global hub for startups in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker unveiled the department's strategic vision and priorities focused on three key areas: trade, innovation and data. Pritzker said her department will make sure businesses have a strong voice when it comes to strengthening the digital economy by working to protect intellectual property, ensuring robust cybersecurity infrastructure and championing free and open Internet.
Follow-on funding, access to technology, talent and resources all can be barriers to commercialization and successfully spinning off sustainable companies. Always seeking a quicker, more viable path to market for technologies and products, university-based programs and public-private partnerships try to tackle these hurdles, which often times are region-specific. Such is the case in Long Island, NY, where a recent partnership between a nonprofit organization and venture capital firm is working to address access to capital concerns.
Save the date!
Hosted by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, SSTI's 18th Annual Conference will be held in Chicago at the Westin Chicago River North Hotel on September 14-16, 2014.
Chicago provides an excellent backdrop for SSTI's 18th Annual Conference. Illinois has a vibrant technology community that is using innovative approaches to bring together state and local partnerships to positively impact the economy.
RoseAnn Rosenthal, president and CEO of Ben Franklin Technology Partnership of Southeastern Pennsylvania, was presented with the Iris Newman Award from the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs.
Rob Wiltbank recently became the CEO of Galois. Prior to Galois, Wiltbank was a professor at Willamette University's Atkinson Graduate School of Management.
Efforts to make university funding dependent on performance outputs have done little to increase degree completion rates, according to researchers from the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE). A WISCAPE study finds that state initaitives to make university funding dependent on number of degree completions, student retention, job placement and other factors have had little to no effect on associate or baccalaureate degree completions.
In conjunction with its annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Kauffman Foundation has released a report tracking per capita startup rates in 40 select U.S. metropolitan areas since 2006. The analysis reveals that startup rates have improved in metro areas, but remain well below pre-recession levels. Data also indicates that larger metros, those with populations greater than one million, have both endured and recovered from the recession slightly better than their less populous counterparts.