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If Americans are going to build better careers and share prosperity as technological changes occur, the U.S. will have to implement more comprehensive policies, according to an MIT task force’s preliminary report titled The Work of the Future: Shaping Technology and Institutions.

SSTI is excited to announce Little Rock, Arkansas, as the site for our 2020 Annual Conference, Oct. 5-7. The conference is the premier gathering of practitioners and policymakers from across the country who work to create a better future through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

This edition of Useful Stats examines the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ first full release of county-level gross domestic product (GDP) data. Specifically, this analysis considers total county GDP in 2018 and the contributions to each county’s GDP by industry.

If reading more is on your list of New Year’s resolutions, SSTI has you covered as we bring you some thoughts from the staff on books we read in 2019. There are those we enjoyed and would recommend, as well as those you may want to skip. Also, feel free to drop us a line and let us know if you have any recommendations to share with us. Perhaps they’ll show up on our list next year!

Dan Berglund, president and CEO

This week’s edition of Useful Stats covers Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) expenditures at the metropolitan level, pulling from the recent NSF updates to its HERD performance data. High levels of college and university R&D activity is not surprisingly clustered heavily in the East Coast — ranging from the District of Columbia up to Boston — and on the West Coast in California.

Congress is expected to pass the FY 2020 budget this week, and as anticipated, the bills include billions in new appropriations. Innovation policy priorities, such as Regional Innovation Strategies, Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and NSF, did well in the final budget. Here are the top things to know about innovation initiatives in the final budget.

1. Regional Innovation Strategies receives $33 million

This year’s national defense authorization act (NDAA) includes extensions of the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program and Manufacturing USA. The House and Senate have passed the FY 2020 legislation, which authorizes up to $738 billion in appropriations and sets policy for a wide range of defense-related activities. The NDAA is one of the few bills that passes Congress each year.

NIH has taken an expanded approach in defining scientists from disadvantaged backgrounds, in an effort to encourage and enable more biomedical scientists. NIH determined that the criteria they were using in defining disadvantaged was too narrow; for example, what was considered low-income ($25,750 for a family of four) is actually considered severe poverty and represents an overly strict threshold, the reviewers found.

A trio of plans focused on economic development at the state level were released this month. Noting that it is at an economic crossroads and facing serious challenges, Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development has issued a new 10-year economic development strategy for the state. Massachusetts has also proposed a new economic development plan, focusing on four key areas, while a new report in Maryland is targeting clean energy as an opportunity for the state to invest in the future.

Maine’s plan

Advancing programs to increase students’ tech skills, raising awareness of the skilled trades, attracting out of state workers by paying moving expenses, and creating a Governor’s Workforce Council, were just a few of the new programs across the states dealing with current and looming shortages in the workforce. This week SSTI takes a look at some of the different workforce development initiatives that surfaced in 2019 as part of our ongoing coverage of innovation programs that were implemented this past year.

In a new working paper, Sabrina T. Howell of New York University and Filippo Mezzanotti of Northwestern University provide a systematic review of state angel tax credits. One of the most notable aspects of their research is a seemingly-comprehensive index of all of the relevant programs authorized by states over the past 30 years. The results indicate that angel tax credits have some impact on investment activity but not on economic outcomes.

The number of students enrolled in all levels of school in 2018 was 76.8 million, a drop of 2.8 percent from the 79 million enrolled in 2011, according to a new study by the U.S. Census Bureau. The biggest decrease in enrollment was at two- and four-year colleges. Enrollment in two-year colleges was down from 5.7 million to 4.3 million, a 25-percent drop, while enrollment in four-year colleges was down from 20.4 million to 18.9 million, a 7.6 percent dip over the 2011-2018 period.

Entrepreneurial support and capital access remain key concerns for regional innovation economies, as evidenced by the abundance of new activity in 2019. From accelerators, many of which are sector-specific, to seed funds, we highlight 26 of the most interesting developments from the past year. This is the latest in our series of articles highlighting innovation system activities in states across the country in 2019.

Across the U.S., the federal government provided 53 percent of R&D funding at institutions of higher education in FY 2018. Those institutions provided 26 percent of the funding themselves, and most of the remainder was provided by a mix of nonprofit organizations (7 percent), industry (6 percent), and state and local government (5 percent). The specific contributions varied from state to state, however, with some relying more on specific relationships to support R&D within the state.

Sensing a gap in conversation about the importance of higher education, Strada Education Network and Gallup partnered to conduct a study on how Americans value their educations.

SSTI notes the recent passing of two officials who helped shaped the impact science and technology had on the American economy. Dr. Mary Good served as Under Secretary of Technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Clinton Administration led the Administration’s Clean Car Initiative and oversaw NIST at the time the Manufacturing Extension Partnership began its expansion to national presence. Mary was as passionate as she was smart. You can read more about her life here.

Turning good intentions into actions is part of the motivation behind a recent report from the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of the Aspen Institute. The report, Rural Development Hubs: Strengthening America’s Rural Innovation Infrastructure, focuses on actions that could build capacity to advance rural community and economic development to improve equity, health and prosperity for future generations.

Tax incentives don’t affect a company’s decision on where to locate in a majority of cases, according to a new book. Making Sense of Incentives: Taming Business Incentives to Promote Prosperity by Timothy J. Bartik of the W.E.

Over the last two years, foreign-born workers have faced  increased difficulty in obtaining work visas, a condition that could lead to negative impacts on the future economic prosperity of the United States. Under the Trump administration, there also has been a reduction in the cap for H-1B visas from 85,000 in 2016 to 65,000 this year.

While Virginia has worked over the past 30 years to build their innovation economy, this past year it changed up the game. SSTI recently talked with Robby Demeria, Virginia’s deputy secretary of commerce and trade for technology, about the planning underway in Virginia and how the commonwealth is proceeding with a new initiative to grow their economy.

Expenditures in higher education R&D (HERD) grew in FY 2018, increasing by $4.1 billion over FY 2017, the largest year-over-year increase since FY 2010-2011 according to an SSTI analysis of recently released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. For the 10-year period from FY 2009 to FY 2018, HERD grew by 38.4 percent nationally, representing an increase of nearly $22 billion.

Earnings for Appalachian manufacturing workers grew 3.4 percent from 2012 through 2017 to an average of $63,583. The growth is in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Industrial Make-up of the Appalachian Region, 2002-2017, which reviews employment and wages by sector across the region. Appalachian workers overall saw earnings increase by 3.7 percent over the five years.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is showcasing a new, online gallery of successful stories of regional value produced when state and local government entities and federal laboratories work together. The State and Local Government T2 Partnerships Gallery features 11 stories from nine states, spotlighting partnerships from nine federal agencies, 12 federal laboratories, and their respective state and local government partners.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced 24 grants to organizations working to increase SBIR/STTR awards and commercialization outcomes in their states. The Federal and State Technology Partnership program (FAST) emphasizes initiatives focusing on underrepresented regions and entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to the SSTI members receiving FAST awards in the 2019 cycle:

The importance of business and industry R&D investment for competitiveness and economic growth is a well-entrenched dictum of national and state innovation policy across most of the developed world. Approaches for incentivizing increased research expenditures fall into two broad categories, direct grants and subsidies to offset R&D costs or R&D tax credits companies may take post-investment for research expenditures.