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SSTI is excited to announce Salt Lake City as the site for the 2018 Annual Conference, which will be held Dec. 3 through 5, with the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR) as the host partner.

“We are excited to bring the conference to Salt Lake City, and we think attendees will have a lot to learn from the growing technology hub,” said Dan Berglund, president and CEO of SSTI. “Many places are struggling with ways to grow their innovation economies and Salt Lake City has been able to turn those struggles into positive growth that people will be able to learn from during the conference.”

SSTI’s Tech Talkin’ Govs feature returns as governors across the country roll out their state of the state addresses. We review each speech for comments relevant to the innovation economy, and bring you their words directly from their addresses. In this second installment, we present excerpts from governors in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Washington.

Workforce development and/or apprenticeship programs receive attention in all of the below excerpts. The Alabama governor said she is seeking an additional $50 million for higher education, while the Georgia governor talked about reorganizing their technical college system. In Indiana the governor is challenging the state economic development department to create thousands of new jobs and said in the first quarter the state will begin to make strategic investments to build and support more innovation and entrepreneurship through the already established $250 million Next Level Indiana Trust Fund.

Last week, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a public announcement on the launch of a new pilot program that supports university-industry basic research collaborations focused on the discovery of novel solutions to challenging defense and national security problems. SSTI members, however, were alerted to the release of the Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO) for the pilot program in a December edition of the SSTI Funding Supplement. Each week, the Funding Supplement provides SSTI members with an expansive list of FFOs and other founding opportunities for their client companies, researchers, and own organizations! Learn more about the SSTI Funding Supplement and the other benefits that SSTI members receive by visting: https://ssti.org/membership-benefits.

Mentoring programs may be celebrated across the nation as January marks National Mentoring Month, a movement started in 2002 to raise awareness of mentoring in all its forms. But more could be done to make programs more effective in both university and non-university settings, according to a recent working paper from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Mentoring in Startup Ecosystems, by Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, et al, found that mentoring is fundamental to founder education, but that such programs could be improved, especially at universities.

States are beginning their next round of budget proposals, following last year’s cautious approach to budgeting. SSTI begins its review of the proposals this week, presenting findings on how states are funding elements of the innovation economy with a review of Alaska, Colorado, Florida and Wyoming state budgets. While Alaska and Wyoming continue to recover from budget shortfalls exacerbated by their dependence on the energy industry, Colorado and Florida both include initiatives to increase funding to higher education and Mississippi looks to join those state offering free tuition with a proposal for free community college through the creation of a Mississippi Works Scholars Program.

Funding for TBED programs took a hit under Massachusetts Gov. Charles Baker, who vetoed millions of dollars in programs that the legislature had approved in the FY 2018 state budget. Michigan programs fared better with funding maintained to diversify the state’s economy and funding for entrepreneurship ecosystems getting a boost. And in Virginia, after a messy budget process addressing an addendum to its biennial budget, many innovation programs saw increases.

For the first time in five years, federal funding for higher education research and development increased in both current and constant dollars, according to recently released data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation. In FY 2016, universities reported $72.0 billion in total R&D expenditures, a 4.8 percent increase from FY 2015. Of this amount, more than half (54 percent) came from the federal government. Institutionally financed research represented 16 percent, the second largest source of R&D funds at universities in FY 2016.

Asserting that the country’s future competitiveness is linked to a quality education, a recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education argues that the completion rate of students pursuing post-secondary education must be increased. The report, The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America, found that while nearly 90 percent of high school graduates expect to enroll in an undergraduate institution at some point, completion rates at those institutions average about 60 percent for students pursuing a bachelor's degree and 30 percent for students pursuing associate's degrees and certificates, with significant disparities within those categories by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. To address the problem, three national priorities are outlined: improving students' educational experience; boosting completion rates and reducing inequities; and controlling costs and ensuring affordability.

Last week, The Digest covered newly released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science Education Statistics, which found that for the first time in five years, federal funding for higher education research and development increased in both current and constant dollars. For the country as a whole, higher education R&D expenditures increased by roughly 10 percent from FY 2011 to FY 2016, while gross domestic product increased by nearly twice as much. This article examines state-by-state trends in R&D activity at colleges at universities.

The final part of this series explores the tactics and strategies associated with increasing exposure to innovation and broadening economic opportunity.

Last week, The Digest explored recent research examining the role that exposure to innovation plays in determining future inventiveness. The study’s authors, led by Stanford’s Raj Chetty, find that a child’s characteristics at birth – their neighborhood, socioeconomic class, race, and gender – are highly predictive of their propensity to file a patent later on in life. Based on their results, the authors recommend strategies that focus on increasing exposure to innovation and broadening intergenerational economic mobility. This article explores these types of policies in depth, as well as additional tactics that may help reconnect America’s communities with greater economic opportunity.

Estimates indicate that R&D expenditures in the United States reached $510 billion in 2016, marking the first time this total has eclipsed the half-trillion mark, according to recently released National Science Foundation data. The majority of R&D expenditures and performance comes from the private sector. From 2011 to 2016, R&D growth kept pace with the economy as a whole, and R&D intensity – measured as R&D expenditures as a share of gross domestic product – was essentially flat. The analysis finds, though, that federal expenditures on R&D decreased during this period.

Expenditures for R&D from state government agencies increased by 17.3 percent from FY 2011 to FY 2016, reaching $2.3 billion, according to data from the Survey of State Government Research and Development, a survey sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). Nearly two-thirds of this total – 64 percent – came from just five state governments (California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Ohio).

The executive council of ENDOW, an economic development initiative started by Wyoming governor Matt Mead, has announced its preliminary recommendations to diversify and grow the state’s economy, including statewide programs to support tech-based economic development that total more than $36 million. Notable among the recommendations are $6 million for a proposed Wyoming Research and Innovation Fund that provides matching funds as a way to leverage federal R&D opportunities and $5 million to develop a new organization called Startup:Wyoming, which would administer the Fund and provide support to entrepreneurs throughout the state.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released a new federal funding opportunity (FFO) for the Innovation Corps-National Innovation Network Teams program (I-Corps Teams). I-Corps team awards provide mentoring and additional funding to promising, NSF-funded researchers at institutions of higher education to accelerate innovation, attract subsequent third-party funding, and increase the commercialization of scientific discoveries. NSF intends to commit $12.75 million to support up to 255 I-Corps teams and proposals are accepted on a continuing basis.

NSF intends to hold a webinar to answer questions about the I-Corps Teams program. Details will be posted on the I-Corps website as they become available.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is exploring options for its future as funding provided through its bond issue dwindles. In a meeting earlier this week, two governing board committees of the agency focused on short and long term finances including a proposal to cut clinical awards by $68 million over the next two years, an effort to raise $222 million in private funding, and the possibility of a $5 billion ballot initiative in November 2020, according to the California Stem Cell Report.

Senate Appropriations subcommittees have advanced the remaining FY 2018 departmental budgets: Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, and Financial Services. Unlike the House’s proposal, the Senate would largely maintain FY 2017’s innovation funding. Highlights include level funding for SBA’s entrepreneurial programs — with $6 million for clusters initiatives and $2 million for accelerators — and level funding for the CDFI Fund. Science and Technology funding, while above the administration's request, would decrease by about 8.6 percent for Homeland Security while Defense would see a small increase for applied research but an overall 0.5 percent decrease, according to the American Institute of Physics.

Venture-backed startups generate nine times the knowledge spillovers (e.g., patenting activity and citations) when compared to that produced by R&D investment of established companies, according to recent research. In Measuring the Spillovers of Venture Capital, researchers from the University of Munich found that, on average, two-thirds of this increase can be traced to more patenting by other companies within the VC-backed company’s spillover pool (e.g., companies with geographic or industry proximity). The companies that most benefited from the knowledge spillover were large, established companies.