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The Senate Commerce Committee approved Wednesday the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (AICA), a reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act. SSTI thanks Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) for his leadership in successfully offering an amendment to increase the authorization level for the Regional Innovation (RI) program to $30 million, which provides support for local innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. SSTI also recognizes Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Sen.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that Columbus, home to SSTI’s 2016 Annual Conference, has won a $40 million grant from the agency, beating out five other cities in the Smart City Challenge.

Each month, several Federal Reserve Banks post survey results for manufacturing activity within their districts. The June results for those released to date vary sharply by region.

President Obama announced  the creation of the new Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (Smart MII) – a $140 million public-private partnership to develop smart sensors for use in advanced manufacturing. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) – a consortium of nearly 200 partners from academia and industry as well as nonprofit organizations – will lead the Smart MII.

This week, the White House is celebrating its third National Week of Making – an important part of its Nation of Makers initiative that seeks to expand opportunities for students and adults to engage with the maker movement. In addition to numerous commitments and announcements made at federal agencies, several other projects rooted in strong partnerships were announced.

When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released his administration’s proposed 2016 budget in late March, SSTI covered the significant funds it would allocate for science, research, and technology-based economic development, as well as the country’s plan for a national innovation agenda.

Because a research base that generates new knowledge is a key pillar of a technology-based economy, an important strategy in technology-based economic development is the expansion of research capacity. While states may go about addressing this in a variety of ways (e.g., R&D tax-credits, university-industry partnerships, recruiting eminent scholars), Florida drew national attention when it took a different approach last decade, allocating more than $450 million to attract nine research institutes through its Innovation Incentive Program (IIP).

Throughout the United States, innovation districts have been proposed with varying degrees of emphasis on inclusivity and opportunity.

Much of the media coverage on the latest NASBO Fiscal Survey of States, suggests the Great Recession is finally behind the states as aggregate general revenue funds finally surpassed fiscal 2008 levels. But unlike the federal government, there are 50 individual state budgets and they tell very different stories, influenced by the economics, demographics, tax structures and politics of the particular state.

When employees discover potentially significant inventions during their line of work, they can decide whether to leave their company and form a new startup around the idea, or to transfer the knowledge to the parent firm and attempt to gain financial compensation through a spinoff. As seen in the 2016 summary report from Failure Aversion Change in Europe (FACE) Entrepreneurship, the two main fears for entrepreneurs are financial security and losing a stable, professional job. Recent research also suggests that granting employees extended leaves of absence with guaranteed options for returning increases the likelihood of entrepreneurship. Coupled together, these results prompted SSTI to further review the relationship between corporate-leave policies and entrepreneurship.

In addition to several new moonshot R&D initiatives and other joint research efforts, several universities recently have announced public-private partnerships that will build multi-million dollar, world-class R&D facilities.

In an attempt to support their respective  innovation economies, several countries have announced new national investment strategies and other entrepreneurial support efforts that help startups access the capital necessary to move their business from an idea to a sustainable businesses. Efforts include a fintech focused-fund in Ireland, expansion of existing programs in two Oceanian countries, and a partnership between two of Asia’s largest economies.

New Zealand

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a bill (HB 233) last month that authorizes cities and villages to create Downtown Redevelopment Districts (DRDs) that can address innovation districts and/or historic rehabilitation. The DRDs permit tax abatements of up to 70 percent of increased assessments in conjunction with payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) or a redevelopment charge that functions as a special assessment tax. In the case of innovation districts, these charges may be used to fund loans or grants to technology businesses—specifically including R&D and technology transfer activities—or to incubators or accelerators in the district.

On June 3, the Department of Commerce’s Economics & Statistics Administration (ESA) released Digital Matching Firms: A New Definition in the 'Sharing Economy' Space.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre launched Capital Intelligent Mtl – a 100 million CD (77.3 million USD) investment fund aimed at smart city startups and established businesses offering solutions to urban challenges that also will spur job creation in Montreal. The new public-private partnership will backed by 23 founding organizations including venture capital firms, financial institutions and corporations that have pledged over 100 million CD in private capital to establish the fund.

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 Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, best known for its “genius grant” fellowships that finance creative endeavors, announced on June 2 a new grant competition called “100&Change.” The $100 million grant will be awarded to a single proposal that contributes to “solving society’s most pressing problems.”  Unlike other competitions, such as XPRIZE moonshots, the foundation is not defining what societal challenge or issue it wants to address, but instead it has purposefully created 100&Change to challenge the notion that foundation gran

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is continuing their campaign to add supporters to Innovation: An American Imperative. The initiative calls on Congress to take several actions, including to: a) increase basic research funding, b) increase funding for STEM programs, c) reform U.S.

In the lead-up to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s (BIO) International Convention held this week, the organization released a series of reports on the health of the industry. Collectively, the reports indicate that the bioscience industry is seeing greater employment with better wages, increasing venture investment, but university and federal funding, patent filings and clinical trial success are leveling off or decreasing.

Despite increasing demand for life sciences research funding and larger budgets from Congress, access to the investigator research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is getting harder, according to data released May 31 by Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for Extramural Research.  R01 grants, the oldest and predominant funding mechanism NIH uses to distribute project-specific research grants, are becoming larger in size and more exclusive in who receives the grants.

While the recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) has some economists concerned that the U.S. economy is running out of qualified workers to fill existing openings, several states have announced workforce programs that are intended to address the skills-gap and build the talent pipeline in their respective states.

Ten Connecticut startups competed in a $10,000 pitch competition at CTNext last week, but the five-year-old state initiative finds itself the winner of a much higher-stakes appraisal. Gov. Dannel Malloy approved the FY 2017 state budget bill on June 2, which will make CTNext an independent organization with $67 million in bonding support.

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SSTI has released the online version of the 2016 SSTI Excellence in TBED Awards Program. Available at sstiawards.org, the online version of the awards brochure will highlight changes to the awards program including the categories for 2016:

As the 2015-2016 academic calendar comes to an end, several universities announced large financial contributions from foundations to address large societal issues including cancer and a variety of neurological disorders.  These large-scale initiatives will be undertaken at universities in California, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

In an effort to prepare students for post-secondary education that meets the needs of key state industries, Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad signed HF 2392 into law on May 26. The new law will attempt to modernize Iowa’s career technical education system as well as increase the number of Iowans with a post-secondary education by helping eighth-grade students develop career and academic plans with an emphasis on work-based training; establishing regional partnerships to help schools provide career technical education; and, expanding career technical education to include new areas in key state industries.