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Congratulations to Steve Zylstra, his staff and the 1,500-plus members of the Pittsburgh Technology Council as they celebrate the organization's 20th anniversary.

A plan to increase Maine's R&D activity to $1 billion by 2010 was revealed last week by the Department of Economic and Community Development's (DECD) Office of Innovation and the Maine Science and Technology Council (MSTAC). The level of R&D activity in Maine currently stands at $430 million.

Four recently published papers from the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia, San Francisco and Chicago center around TBED issues including the role of cities in the 21st Century, the biotechnology industry in the Midwest, state R&D tax credits, and R&D spending during recessions. Links to these papers and more than 1,000 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and o

Wisconsin manufacturers must adapt to a fast-changing world in order to grow and succeed in the 21st century. That is the thrust of a recent study of the state’s industrial economy recently released by the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (WMEP).

Rhode Island, like nearly every state in the country, is facing a projected budget deficit in FY 2004. To deal with a $175 million or 6.6 percent shortfall, 21 agencies are facing budget reductions in Governor Don Carcieri's first budget request to the Rhode Island General Assembly. However, demonstrating his commitment to "make strategic investments to promote job growth," Gov. Carcieri calls for increased support for several tech-based economic development initiatives.

Three-quarters of the nation's cities surveyed by the National League of Cities (NLC) report they are less able to meet their financial needs this year than they were a year ago. This is a sharp increase over the 55 percent of cities that said they were less able to meet financial needs in last year's survey by NLC, the oldest and largest national organization for American cities.

Washington State still ranks first nationally in the creation of new companies, according to the third annual Index of Innovation and Technology released by the Washington Technology Center (WTC), a state-funded organization that fosters technology employment growth. The Index also shows the number of patents earned by Washington inventors increased by 11 percent from 2000 to 2001.

Minnesota manufacturers are cutting payrolls, bidding low and scrambling to compete with the giant threat of cheap labor and enhanced manufacturing facilities offered in China, according to a recent survey of Greater Minnesota manufacturing companies.

Around the country, the current funding climate is forcing some technology groups to explore new relationships with each other, including consolidation. In other cases, it just makes good sense. For example, two of Maine's environmental and energy technology organizations are joining forces with the goal of advancing job growth, R&D and new product commercialization within their overlapping industries.

Encouraging innovation is an important part of the bottom line for many state and local technology-based economic development programs. The advantages or "spillover effects" of growing localized knowledge economies or concentrations of researchers and technology firms has been studied by academia for more than two decades. Much of the attention of that analysis and of subsequent public policy has been on the knowledge or process side of innovation.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced it intends to award approximately $30 million in FY 2005 funding under the Science and Technology Centers (STC): Integrative Partnerships program. NSF is encouraging proposals for high quality innovative research projects that undertake investigations across or within disciplines.

Knowledge in the "knowledge economy" can be an extremely difficult entity to measure with any consistency. Innovation and technological change, both key drivers of economic growth, are elusive to grasp and even harder to measure reliably in geographic terms. Patent activity, however, has long been considered an important measure of innovation in the New Economy.

To better formulate technology and telecommunications policy, U.S.

In these tight state fiscal times, many government functions would view level funding with the previous year as very good news. Since tech-based economic development (TBED) programs are investments toward economic prosperity, conventional wisdom would hold that legislatures would shield these types of investments from deep cuts.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty recently unveiled a plan to help make Minnesota a leader in biosciences. Governor Pawlenty says the state's history, expertise and economic infrastructure make it better prepared than most other states to capitalize on the bioscience industry.

The Wisconsin Venture Network (WVN) in Milwaukee has folded into the Wisconsin Innovation Network (WIN) Foundation in Madison, and the combined WIN entity has become a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Technology Council.

A higher rate of entrepreneurial activity is strongly connected with faster growth of a local economy, the U.S. Census Bureau reports in Endogenous Growth and Entrepreneurial Activity in Cities. The recent working paper, prepared by the Bureau's Center for Economic Studies, examines the connection between knowledge spillover and economic growth in a regional economy.

Despite an economic slowdown, the Twin Cities is more competitive than it was a year ago, according to a study released by the Great North Alliance, a regional civic leadership organization. Conducted annually, the Great North Opportunity Forecast uses regional productivity and innovation to predict future competitiveness and opportunity.

Earlier this week U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Don Evans announced the Digital Freedom Initiative (DFI) would be piloted in Senegal, a democratic secular nation in which 94 percent of the population is Muslim. DFI is designed to promote economic growth by transferring the benefits of information and communication technology (ICT) to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the developing world.

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education recently released The Rising Price of Higher Education, which documents the rising costs of public education in the U.S. Using the data found in the report, SSTI has constructed a 50-state table presenting a comparison of the cost of tuition and fees at 2- and 4-year public institutions in 2001-02 vs 2002-03.

There were recurring themes underlying the design and development of SSTI's 9th Annual Conference, Investing in a Brighter Future: Building Tech-based Economies, held Oct. 19-21 in Atlanta, Georgia: inevitability, irrelevance and inspiration.

One comment we receive numerous times each year at SSTI's annual conference is that people wish more of the key decision makers and TBED practitioners in their regions had attended the event to make it easier to re invigorate their entire efforts to promote growth through science and technology. The easiest way to accomplish that is to host SSTI's 10th Annual Conference next fall!

To stimulate equity investment in America's small businesses and create jobs, the U.S. Senate introduced last week the Small Business Investment and Growth Act of 2005.

Examining the components that would most likely be attributed directly to Acting Gov. Richard Codey's proposed $380 million Stem Cell Research Initiative, a Rutgers University study finds that, potentially, the state stands to benefit from an estimated $1.4 billion in new economic activity, approximately 20,000 new jobs, and $71.9 million in new state revenue over the next 20 years.

To improve the way students learn and teachers teach in the areas of science and mathematics, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri's Blue Ribbon Panel on Mathematics and Science Education recommends 12 specific strategies in four key areas including governance and culture; teacher recruitment; teacher quality; and learning opportunities for students.