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It's probably the case that not all of your travel over the next few months will be for personal vacation. Conference excursions can stimulate new ideas, add to your professional growth, and establish or strengthen opportunities for collaboration. In addition to reserving Oct. 31-Nov. 2 for SSTI's 10th Annual Conference in Oklahoma City, we encourage you to check out our web calendar of events to scan more than 140 additional opportunities for professional development.

With preparations for SSTI's 10th Annual Conference in Oklahoma City on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 well underway, we have received many questions from local, regional and state organizations wanting to host the premier event for the tech-based economic development (TBED) profession in 2007. Because of the increased interest, SSTI has bumped up its schedule for selecting the 2007 site. We are accepting nominations of host organizations and locations for SSTI's 11th Annual Conference until July 30, 2006.

Although technology sector employment is down slightly from previous years, Washington firms received twice the aggregate amount of venture capital (VC) funding compared to last year, and the state remains above the national average in educational attainment, according to the sixth annual Washington State Index of Innovation and Technology.

Republican members of the House Committee on Science introduced last week three bills designed to strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness by improving math and science education and research.

High speed Internet access, global positioning systems and other information and communication technologies have revolutionized urban and regional economic development, both planning and practice. Communities willing and able to make the appropriate investment decisions regarding information improve their abilities to compete.

Perhaps in no field more than biotechnology are the roles of alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and licensing so influential in determining the future success of a start-up firm. Pharmaceuticals are perhaps the best example of this. There aren't hundreds of big pharma companies around the world; there are perhaps a dozen, and, thanks to television advertising for meds, most are practically household names. To make it as a young biopharma business, most plan to be licensed up or bought out.

[Publisher's note: In last week's Digest, we prepared a table showing what I thought was per capita federal R&D spending by state for 2003. Some readers who are more astute than I questioned the data, and in reviewing how I used the NSF data, I discovered that I had done so incorrectly. My apologies to all for this error. We have removed the incorrect table from our website.

Much of the U.S. policy debate regarding the impact of globalization has focused on workforce preparedness and the need for American industry to sustain innovation. Bills before Congress urge increased spending on R&D, especially in the physical sciences and engineering. Much of the data that has helped fuel the competitiveness discussion has focused on indices and statistical reports presenting the U.S. in comparison to other nations. 

Marketing tech-based economic development (TBED) programs can be challenging, particularly with the diverse nature of its target audiences of entrepreneurs, existing companies, financial sources, university researchers and, oftentimes, legislators. Sometimes, even the name of the program can cause misconceptions, particularly when a new initiative is outside the traditional services or roles offered by the TBED organization. A recent example of this comes from South Carolina.

Summer classes, camps and special programs to stimulate and sustain K-12 students' interests in science and math will be found all across the country during the next few months. A less frequently occurring phenomenon will be taking place in the Great Lakes Region of Iowa, helping a select group of college students to combine entrepreneurship, rural economic development, and recreation.

The U.S. automotive industry is one of the nation's oldest modern manufacturing sectors, and, similar to many other older populations, is increasingly making its home in the South. Despite this fact, the sector remains heavily centered in the Midwest, according to a new article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The Geographic Evolution of the U.S. Auto Industry reveals 47 percent of the nation's motor vehicle employment still resides in three states: Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published its online statistical resource center for state-level statistics on various science and engineering (S&E) indicators. Drawing data from the most recent updates to seven annual NSF surveys and U.S. Census statistics, the profiles includes downloadable Excel or PDF versions of state statistics for:

The third installment to Walkin' the Tech Talkin' Gov Walk (see the April 17 and May 8 issues of the Digest) covers the outcomes of the 2006 legislative sessions for two states, Illinois and Wisconsin.

With assets totalling more than $15 billion, the Indiana Public Employees Retirement Fund (PERF) has decided to place $100 million into higher-risk equity placements through its first Indiana Investment Fund. The fund will exclusively target venture capital deals within Indiana, according to the PERF news release. Like pension funds in many states, PERF has a requirement to place a certain percentage of its assets in private equity. The PERF goal is 5 percent and includes real estate deals as well.

The opportunity for innovation and the need for angel capital are not limited to the major metropolitan areas and large research universities, as the board of trustees for Taylor University and leaders of the Grant County Economic Growth Council in rural Indiana will attest. The east-central Indiana county is home to just over 70,500 residents and, soon, two angel funds.

Maryland General Assembly approval of a $1 million boost for the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) Program, one of the nation's oldest continually run programs to support university-industry research projects leading to technology commercialization, marks a 74 percent increase above the $1.35 million program budget for 2006. The increase was proposed by Gov.

While the Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has the recipe for a creative economy - people in creative occupations, industries with a creative workforce, and an environment that supports creativity - it falls short of the national average in more than 75 percent of all creative occupational categories, a new study by the Maricopa Partnership for Arts and Culture (MPAC) finds.

If you know any secondary school teachers or, like millions of Americans, you are heavily involved in high school graduation season right now, you know that the Class of `06 is not like the Class of `05 or the upcoming Class of '07. Assemblages of students tend to develop discernable class personalities as they march from kindergarten through grade 12, distinct and possibly very different than most of their individual personalities.

The fourth installment to Walkin' the Tech Talkin' Gov Walk (see the April 17 , May 8 and June 5 issues of the Digest) covers the outcomes of the 2006 legislative sessions within Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and Vermont.

Does increasing a university or community college's involvement in tech-based economic development - through technology incubators or early-stage capital programs - detract from the nonprofit, educational purpose of the institution? Fortunately, for many state and regional TBED strategies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says no. The IRS recently released a ruling affirming the nonprofit status of a college foundation planning to unveil a new high-tech incubator and pre-seed capital fund.

Promoting the policies and harnessing the habits that will make innovation central to a Southern way of life requires a fundamental shift in the approach to knowledge itself, says the latest report by the Southern Growth Policies Board.



The report, Innovation with a Southern Accent: The 2006 Report on the Future of the South, offers recommendations for 13 states and Puerto Rico to transition the region into a more knowledgeable, innovative and prosperous South.

[Editor's Note: SSTI is excited to welcome Phillip Battle to its staff as a policy analyst. The author of this article, Phil recently received his Master in Public Affairs degree from the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin. His area of research interest is technology policy and economic development.]

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently released advanced real gross state product (GSP) estimates for 2005. According to the data, real GSP grew in all 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2001-2005. Western states dominated the lead in U.S. economic growth, with Nevada incurring the largest increase in real GSP growing from $75.1 billion in 2001 to $96.6 billion in 2005 -- a 28.56 percent change.

The fifth installment to Walkin' the Tech Talkin' Gov Walk (see the April 17, May 8, June 5 and June 12 issues of the Digest) covers the outcome of the 2006 Massachusetts legislative sess

Four short years ago, 37 states were in fiscal crisis, many making several rounds of deep spending cuts to cope with the most dramatic reduction in revenues in 20 years. In all, more than $15 billion were shaved from state budgets. Twenty-one states experienced negative revenue growth in FY 2003, forcing even deeper cuts. The fiscal winter of '02-'03 slowed many states' strategies for supporting growth in their knowledge-based economies.