Last week, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez signed House Bill 2 into law, new tax incentive legislation that, according to the governor, expands the state’s economic development toolkit. The bill received bipartisan support, in the GOP-controlled House, where it passed 60-2, and the majority-Democrat Senate, where it was approved 31-11.

In recent years, academic researchers have focused on trying to identify the characteristics that could make someone a potentially successful founder of a startup. However, there has been limited research on the characteristic of the individuals who join these founders as early employees to help them develop and commercialize innovative new products and services.

Biotech is in the midst of an investment boom, at least in Silicon Valley. In the first quarter of this year, biotech firms in the region raised $574 million, the third highest quarter on record, according to data from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and reporting by the San Jose Mercury News. This peak represents a 103 percent increase over the same quarter the previous year.

Now that many governors have signed spending bills and legislative sessions are drawing to a close, the SSTI Digest will check on the status of proposals related to the innovation economy, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review spending bills in Alaska, Connecticut, Louisiana, South Carolina and Vermont.

Now that many governors have signed spending bills and legislative sessions are drawing to a close, the SSTI Digest will check on the status of proposals related to the innovation economy, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review spending bills in California, Iowa, Ohio and New Jersey.

Now that many governors have signed spending bills and legislative sessions are drawing to a close, the SSTI Digest will check on the status of proposals related to the innovation economy, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review spending bills in Delaware, Hawaii, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Research Foundation for the State University of New York will receive a $110 million federal grant from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to lead the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM-Photonics). The Department of Defense-funded grant will be supplemented by a $250 million investment from the state of New York with additional funding commitments from public and private partners expected to exceed $245 million over the next five years.

With place-based policies for free higher education in place at the local level for years, recent developments have begun to apply these programs on a grander scale. This month, Oregon became the second state to provide free community-college to its citizens, while a team of congressional Democrats introduced a proposal to move forward with President Obama’s plan for free community-college nationally.

Between 1998 and 2010, impact investment funds outperformed funds of the same size, according to the Wall Street Journal. Impact-focused funds of $100 million or less posted a 9.5 percent pooled net internal rate of return, outperforming the 4.5 percent delivered by funds of the same size that were not focused on impact investments.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation will award $2 million in grants to expand successful nonprofit programs to help entrepreneurs. The foundation is seeking scalable programs at nonprofit organizations to receive grants between $250,000 and $500,000, paid over two years. Awardees will be selected for their demonstrated record of supporting entrepreneurs, geographic diversity and scalability. Applications are due July 31, 2015.

Last month, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed the MNVest bill – an intrastate securities exemption that allows Minnesota-based companies and entrepreneurs to raise money through equity crowdfunding. To qualify for the exemption, businesses must show evidence of several requirements including being organized under state laws and that its principal office is located in Minnesota. Companies can raise capital from both accredited and non-accredited investors from across the state.

Women as business owners may be an underutilized resource for economic development and growth in the state of Wisconsin, according to a recent study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) – Women Business Leaders Across Wisconsin, 1990-2011. The researchers found that women-owned or managed more than 80,000 Wisconsin-based businesses (nearly 19 percent of all businesses) in 2011.

Located just a 20-minutes from New York City, Newark has long existed in the shadow of its much larger neighbor. Despite this, Newark’s downtown received an important boost to its innovation ecosystem this week with the announcement of Newark Venture Partners, a venture capital fund and accelerator.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the winning teams of its first Community College Innovation Challenge (CCIC) – a competition that challenged teams of community college students to propose innovative science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-based solutions to real-world problems. The Red Foxes, from Red Rocks Community College (CO), placed first in the challenge with its innovative Mobile Medical Disaster Relief Dispensation Unit.

In FY13, federal agencies obligated $29 billion to 995 academic institutions for science and engineering (S&E) activities, according to a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief. The FY13 federal obligation represented a 6 percent decrease in current dollars from the $31 billion that federal agencies obligated to 1,073 academic institutions in FY12 – the third year in a row of declining S&E funding to academic institutions.

Although immigrants account for approximately one-fourth of U.S. science and engineering (S&E) employment, there have been relatively few academic studies published that discuss the link between these immigrants, who represent an increasing share of the U.S. workforce, and innovation in the United States. Through a broad investment from the Alfred P.

Over the past 40 years, the number of women across the globe filing patents has risen fastest within academia compared to all other sectors of the innovation economy, according to a new study from researchers at Indiana University (IU). The researchers found that the overall percentage of patents with women's names attached rose from an average of 2 percent to 3 percent across all areas in 1976 to 18 percent in 2013 for female academics.

Venture capital (VC) firms invested more than $17 billion in 1,189 deals in the second quarter of 2015, the highest level of activity since 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Megadeals (deals greater than $100 million) in the software sector drove much of the growth, with 26 deals such deals, including one that exceeded $1 billion. With $7.3 billion in investments, software deals in the second quarter exceeded total investment across all sectors in 51 of the last 82 quarters.

Total venture capital investment rose 95 percent in 20 of the world’s top startup ecosystems from 2013-2014, according to The Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2015 – a 160-report from Compass, formerly Startup Genome. Compass researchers also found that the global startup ecosystem landscape is maturing rapidly with non-Silicon Valley ecosystems capturing 14 percent more of the exit value pie in three years (2012-2014). In 2014, non-Silicon Valley startup ecosystems captured 59 percent of the value of all startup exits, up from approximately 45 percent in 2012.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the designation of 12 new communities as part of the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) initiative. This second round of manufacturing communities was selected by an interagency panel to receive targeted support from 11 different federal agencies and programs. The IMCP initiative is intended to accelerate U.S. manufacturing by investing in partnerships and long-term economic development strategies in key regions. More than $1 billion in federal assistance will be available to the 12 designated communities.

In FY 2013, the federal government obligated $25.9 billion for science and engineering research and development (S&E R&D) at colleges and universities, a decrease of $1.6 billion from FY 2012 (5.7 percent). Eight states (California, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Texas, North Carolina, and Illinois) each received more than $1 billion in funding during FY 2013, though each state also experienced a decrease from their FY 2012 total.

Challenge.gov, an online portal that facilitates public-sector prize competitions, is celebrating its fifth anniversary later this year. Numerous federal agencies have used prize competitions to spur innovation around areas ranging from water desalination to lung cancer, according to a White House blog post.

On Wednesday, President Obama launched a new National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) by executive order. The multi-agency effort will seek partnerships with academia and industry to build high-performance computing systems capable of exascale processing and more than 10 times as fast as existing supercomputers.

SYNEVA Economics – a consulting firm focused on local and regional economic analysis – released a free-to-use, web-based tool that allows users to examine monthly change in employment for the United States’ largest metros from January 2008 to May 2015. Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the Metro Employment Index interactive dashboard includes a mapping function that allows users to examine monthly employment data for all 387 metros.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a request for information (RFI) that invites comments and suggestions from the public to help in the development of its new five-year strategic plan.