On November 20, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) held its annual Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation. During the daylong event, panelists focused on two important issues – secondary market liquidity for securities of small businesses and the potential revision of accredited investor definition.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) released a request for information (RFI) on revisions to two key areas of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) policy directives: SBIR/STTR Phase III policy; and, SBIR/STTR data rights.

With the hopes of better understanding which policy environments encourage and support innovation, new research  from the C.D. Howe Institute, a Canadian public policy thinktank, examines which sectors and provinces drive Canadian patent intensity.

Last week, the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) announced the launch of FLCBusiness, an all-inclusive search database that shares information about funding, equipment, know-how, and resources available from the federal lab network for private and public utilization.

The U.S.s entrepreneurial culture, long celebrated as a key element in the country’s economic success, is being threatened by several long-term trends, according to a paper from the Brookings Institution’s Robert Litan and Ian Hathaway. Over the past 30 years, U.S. business starts have slid downward, with many experts and policymakers offering their own explanations for the trend. Litan and Hathaway examine the data and note two possible causes: regional population decline and business consolidation.

As part of President Obama’s recent executive order on immigration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently issued a number of new policies and regulations intended to capitalize on the skills of foreign workers, researchers and students. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published an explanation of how the new rules will also be used to attract immigrant entrepreneurs through two new pathways to legal residency.

Around the world, national governments are working to cultivate their innovation economies and increase their global competiveness by creating and increasing support for government-led initiatives. Leaders of advanced economies recognize that their positions as global leaders face a murky future due to the emergence of new economies. In turn, officials from emerging economies realize that supporting innovation is necessary for their economies to continue their rapid growth.

This week, governors in Oregon and North Dakota released their budget proposals for the upcoming budget cycle. Although the budgets differ in both size and scope, education, workforce development, and other programs related to technology-based economic development are set to receive considerable amounts of state funding.

In the recently released 50 State Project, CQ Roll Call provides an overview of the 45,564 bills and resolutions that were passed by state legislatures between the 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions. The report found the top issues covered by state legislatures during the timeframe were state budgets, education (including STEM and higher education), taxes, and transportation. Other important issues included job creation and energy-related issues.

Over the last couple months, the San Francisco-based Uber, a mobile-app-based transportation network, announced partnerships with institutions of higher education in the Northeast. In February, Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched a strategic partnership that includes the launch of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, a Pittsburgh-based research laboratory to advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a framework to increase public access to scientific publications and digital scientific data funded by NSF grants. The plan, entitled Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries, will require that NSF-funded research presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions be deposited in a database within one year of publication for the public to download, read, and analyze.

President Obama announced over $240M in new multi-sector commitments dedicated to STEM education and outreach, with an emphasis on underserved groups, at the 2015 White House Science Fair on Monday. With the new investments, the president’s “Education to Innovate” campaign, launched in November 2009, has now resulted in more than $1 billion in financial and in-kind support for STEM initiatives. 

Over the past few months, SSTI has followed proposals issued by governors in their budget requests, State of the State Addresses, Inaugural Speeches and other events. Now that many state legislatures have begun approving budgets, the Digest will check on the status of these proposals, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review budgets in Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming

Earlier this year, the University of Washington (UW) relaunched its technology commercialization office as CoMotion, an entrepreneurial hub and makerspace. In doing so, UW joined a growing number of universities that have opened up their technology transfer operations to approaches inspired by the tech startup scene. The transformations of the University of Pennsylvania, Wake Forest, Tufts University and UCLA recently were profiled in Nature Biotechnology.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has release a solicitation (NSF 15-562) seeking public and private partners for four new Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs. The hubs would build on the Obama administration's National Big Data Research and Development Initiative by creating a nationwide network of local stakeholders invested in overcoming technology barriers to large-scale data processing and interpretation.

Over the past few months, SSTI has followed proposals issued by governors in their budget requests, State of the State Addresses, Inaugural Speeches and other events. Now that many state legislatures have begun approving budgets, the Digest will check on the status of these proposals, and examine the state of technology-based economic development funding in the states. This week, we review actions in Arkansas, Mississippi and New York.

Europe is catching up to the United States in areas such as idea creation and risk capital but lacks the means to retain its talent, according to a recent report from authors at the Imperial College Business School in London.

Because of recent changes in the methodologies used by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), research and development is now recognized as investment in statistics on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).  As a result, from 1929 to 2012, the average annual growth rate of GDP is 0.1 percentage point higher than in the previously published estimates.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the first 26 recipients of the 2014 Regional Innovation Strategies program grants. Managed by the Economic Development Administration, the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program is designed to advance innovation and capacity-building activities in regions across the country through three different types of grants:

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final rules to update and expand Regulation A, an existing exemption from registration for smaller issuers of securities.  The new Regulation A+ will enable smaller companies to offer and sell up to $50 million of securities in a 12-month period, subject to eligibility, disclosure and reporting requirements. Under Regulation A+, there are two tiers of offerings that companies may make that include:

Working groups at The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and The Association of American Universities (AAU), two membership organizations of higher education institutions, have released statements on the role of universities in managing intellectual property and technology transfer alongside their core missions and interest in maximizing public benefit.

Only 17 companies had initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first quarter of 2015, the lowest number since the beginning of 2013, according to data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). This is a significant drop from the 37 IPO exits in the first quarter of 2014. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were also down, with 86 exits, compared to 115 in Q1 2014. While 2014 was an unusually active time for venture-backed exits, the current data appears to be a return to recession-era levels of deals and disclosed values.