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More than 60 organizations have signed on to an SSTI-initiated letter urging Congressional leaders to fund the Regional Innovation program at $20 million for FY2015. The Regional Innovation Program was authorized under the American COMPETES Act and is designed to provide funding to support regional innovation activities. The program received its first funding of $10 million in FY2014, and the solicitation for that funding is expected to be issued any day. The Senate has approved $20 million for the program for FY2015, while the House did not provide any funding for the program.

To compete in the global world market, regions must continue to evolve and better understand how best practices support their regional industries, including defining the benchmarks of a successful industry cluster. In a recent academic article from Harvard researchers, Mercedes Delgado, Michael Porter, and Scott Stern unveiled a new algorithm tool that generates and assesses sets of cluster definitions. The new algorithm will be integrated into the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project to help researchers and policymakers cultivate more successful regional clusters.

The National Governor’s Association (NGA) announced that it will provide grants, technical assistance and opportunities to align education and training systems with private sector needs in 14 states. Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia have been selected to receive support to build industry and education partnerships and optimize their workforce-oriented incentives.

Global investors are more confident investing in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, according to a recent survey from Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).  Confidence in the U.S. macroeconomy and U.S. investments has now grown for the third straight year and continues to lead among the 12 countries included in the study. Respondents, however, indicated that they had a negative opinion of the country’s investment policy environment. U.S.

In one of his first appearances at a national economic development conference, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Jay Williams will address SSTI's Annual Conference on September 15 in Chicago.

To revitalize the U.S. manufacturing base, states and private organizations are turning their attention to support university-led, manufacturing Research and Development (R&D) partnerships that reduce the cost of manufacturing domestically and equip U.S. manufacturers with cutting-edge technologies. Responsive to the needs of industry, these partnerships are intended to not only spur innovation, but also support economic prosperity in regions across the country. The Walmart Foundation and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett announced new funding for university-led manufacturing partnerships.

Within the past few months, several indices have been released that attempt to rank states based on their entrepreneurial activity. From the perspective of economic development agencies, these indices are particularly helpful in assessing where each state stands according to the numerous ways to measure entrepreneurship. These indices, however, should be taken with a grain of salt; issues can arise when too much importance is placed on these lists for the sake of competition or the need for press.

The Federal Communications Commission announced a round of funding for rural broadband experiments in price cap areas that will deploy new, robust broadband to consumers. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a series of reports on its broadband grant programs.

The Angel Resource Institute (ARI), Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights released the Halo Report for the first quarter (Q1) of 2014. The national survey of angel group investment activity reported encouraging results as both investments and valuations climbed in Q1— median round sizes increased to $980K per deal up from 2013 averages, and pre-money valuations rose to $2.7 million from $2.5 million in Q4 of 2013. The climb was driven mostly by investments in Internet-related companies that jumped significantly.

The Manufacturing Institute announced that it is accepting applications for the 2015 STEP Awards program, a national awards program to honor women who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in manufacturing. Part of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Production (STEP) Ahead initiative, STEP Awards aim to recognize women at all levels of manufacturing. These awards illustrate the widespread impact women have on shaping the industry, whether they are running the company, designing the next big product, or testing innovations on the shop floor.

On August 1, the Massachusetts lawmakers enacted a comprehensive economic development bill (H.4377). The bill currently awaits Gov. Deval Patrick’s approval. Per state law, Gov. Patrick has until August 14 to sign the bill, 10 days after he received it. The approved bill that received unanimous approval by the Massachusetts state Senate was passed as a comprise package between two bills proposed in the Senate and House.

In an SSTI Digest article last month, SSTI detailed the most recent MoneyTree reports from National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Halfway through FY 2014, U.S. venture capital investments reached $22.7 billion, the highest first-half total since 2001. Using halves of fiscal years as the unit of analysis, this Digest article examines each state’s share of venture capital dollars and deals since 2010.

Between 2000 and 2010, about one-third of U.S. manufacturing employment – approximately five million jobs – were lost as a result of new technologies in the manufacturing process or competition from abroad, according to The Brookings Institution.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a public comment period that will assist in the development of an upcoming update of the Strategy for American Innovation. Via a notice of Request for Information (RFI), individuals and organizations have the opportunity to provide input on one or more of nine topic areas:

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) released federal funding opportunity award competitions for the operation of MEP state centers. States up for competition include Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

In 2011, U.S.-located companies spent $29.6 billion for extramural (purchased and collaborative) research and development performed by mostly domestic organizations, according to a National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief. Approximately $24 billion in R&D spending was purchased R&D. The additional $5.6 billion was payments to R&D collaborators.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its latest broadband report. The report provides summarized data on Internet access connections in the U.S. (over 200 kilobits per second in at least one direction). Key findings include the number of broadband connections with downstream speeds of at least 10 Mbps increased by 118% in the U.S. between June 2012 and June 2013.

The White House Rural Council has launched a $10 billion rural economic development fund. This launch was announced last Thursday at the Rural Opportunity Investment Conference held in Washington D.C. CoBank, a Denver-based national cooperative bank, serves as the anchor investor of the fund that will be managed by Capitol Peak Asset Management. Capitol will also recruit additional institutional investors to the fund including pension funds, endowments, and foundations that are interested in investing in rural areas.

In an increasingly globalized marketplace, the ability to penetrate the ultra-valuable U.S. market is still an end goal for companies throughout the world. Since the early 2000s, foreign governments have opened accelerators as one mechanism to provide funding, mentorship, and additional support for young firms hoping to enter the U.S. market. Although many of these accelerators feature common characteristics, each has its own strategy for best reaching the needs of its young and promising companies.

President Barack Obama signed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) into law on July 22 – a federal-wide reform effort designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. WIOA is the first legislative reform in 15 years of the public workforce system.

Anchored by the largest ever investment since the MoneyTree Report began covering venture capital investment in 1995, the $13 billion total dollars invested in the second quarter of 2014 marks the largest total quarterly investment since $13.1 billion was invested in the first quarter of 2001, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) MoneyTree survey. Likewise, the $22.7 billion invested in the first half of 2014 is the highest first half total since 2001.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. launched Small Business Forward℠ — a five-year, $30 million grant program to help industry cluster initiatives in cities across the country.  Through Small Business Forward, JPMorgan Chase will fund nonprofit organizations that work with small businesses concentrated in a single industry sector.