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Domestic business R&D expenditures have jumped 15% ($89 billion) from 2021 to 2022. This jump continues a decade-long trend of year-over-year increases, as a new 2022 Business Enterprise R&D (BERD) survey shows.

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) has announced the Regional Innovation Clusters initiative awards winners. There are 14 winners from a pool of 79 applicants. There are two categories for these awards: emerging and mature clusters.

Forty-one states and Puerto Rico will vote on 151 statewide ballot measures this fall.   

Although it led the global digital revolution, the United States is faltering now when it comes to digital skills possessed by the workforce. That is one of the findings of a recent report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which goes on to say that such developments bode poorly for long-term U.S. competitiveness if such trends aren’t reversed.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the establishment of a new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations that will support projects in areas including clean hydrogen, carbon capture, grid-scale energy storage, small modular reactors, and more. The recently-signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $21.5 billion in funding for the office’s administration and projects through 2026.

In January, the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education released an updated 2021 classification list for universities. In this update, nine more universities have achieved the “Doctoral/Very High Research Activity” or “R1” category, the highest possible rank among research universities. Six additional universities were also added to the list following a six-week review period.

Celebrating its 25 years in operation, the National Robotics Engineering Center’s (NREC) success is revealed in an economic study commissioned by Carnegie Mellon University “to inform the future development of boundary-pushing institutions.” Established decades ago as “a new model of academic-industry partnership,” the NREC study, conducted by Fourth Economy Consulting, reveals how the robotics institution changed the economy of the neighborhood, region and robotics industry in Pittsburgh.

PitchBook and NVCA have published an initial look at the Venture Monitor Q4 2021, and the data already suggest an astounding level of activity in 2021. As of Dec. 31, PitchBook had identified $330 billion invested across more than 15,000 deals, substantial increases over the $167 billion invested across 12,000 deals in 2020.

While the headline above may be one of the most boring written in the SSTI Weekly Digest’s history, any recipient of federal grant funding should be aware that changes are coming to the Uniform Grants Guidance that governs federal grants, effective October 1. The guidance “sets the foundational requirements for agencies in making grants and providing other forms of Federal financial assistance, such as cooperative agreements and loans,” according to the White House. The changes will apply only to awards after October 1.

SSTI has released a new video in our Federal Funding Video Library featuring Trent Thompson, economic development representative with the Economic Development Administration’s Denver Regional Office. In this interview, we discuss how EDA’s Economic Adjustment Assistance (EAA) funds can be leveraged to support technology-based economic development (TBED) activities.

Accelerators are practically everywhere in the U.S., and a look at Pitchbook data on May 13, 2024, seems to confirm that. For the five years of 2019-2023, Pitchbook tagged 18,808 different companies as having received “accelerator/incubator funding.” Conceptually, they were all startups when they received that funding and will be at widely varying degrees of evolution today (the status for 1,730 of them, for instance, was listed as “out of business”). Only 765 were classified as being one of four statuses that might be most easily considered as positive exits:  1. publicly held; 2.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators published Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United States Senate. The roadmap encourages the executive branch and the Senate Appropriations Committee to reach the $32 billion per year non-defense AI innovation spending level proposed by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Registration is now open for the SSTI 2024 Annual Conference in Phoenix, December 10-12, at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass, located in the Gila River Indian Community.

Join us to experience thought-provoking keynotes, open forums, and ample discussion so that you can share your perspective with peers and have your questions answered by policymakers and practitioners—all looking to exchange ideas on creating a better future through science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

This week the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released Regional Innovation: Federal Programs and Issues for Consideration, which provides a summary of federal programs supporting regional innovation systems (RIS), including programs of the CHIPS and Science Act.

Following a jolt of outmigration and population declines from some of the country’s most populous counties in 2021, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that county growth patterns are returning to pre-pandemic rates. The U.S.

This article was edited on April 19th, 2023, to correct for an error in the original data analysis.

What is the value of a college degree today? While tuition costs continue to rise, opinions on the perceived value of the degrees institutions of higher education provide are falling.

Last year's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) reauthorization included a new requirement that participating agencies work to identify foreign connections of applying companies. Certain types of connections to “countries of concern,” which include China and Russia, could result in the small business being prohibited from receiving federal funds. The U.S.

A new fact sheet released today from the White House outlines three recent activities related to artificial intelligence.

Availability of a new data tool developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that during the period surrounding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was wide variation among the states on the ratio of unemployed persons per job opening.  Michigan peaked at 10.6 unemployed persons for each job opening, followed by Hawaii (10.3) and Nevada (10.2), far above most states, while others like D.C. (1.7) and Nebraska (2.1) and North Dakota (2.2) remained relatively unaffected.

College earnings premiums appear to be declining for the first time in decades and the value proposition of college is beginning to fade in the eyes of many, according to the Harvard Workforce Almanac. As education costs continue to skyrocket and student debt mounts, Americans are reconsidering whether college is truly worth the expense. One means of addressing the issue is to provide data to better inform decision-making.

A recent study published in the Journal of Higher Education reveals that a college graduate’s mix of funding sources may reflect when they were born and how likely they were to obtain a graduate degree.

The Indiana General Assembly recently passed three bills that have the potential to impact the workforce in the state. Two bills address college affordability while the third exempts active-duty military from paying individual state income tax.

The 2020 pandemic was unique when it came to changes in the labor market. Unlike in previous recessions, most layoffs from the pandemic were temporary. While employment is back to pre-pandemic levels, the recovery has been uneven across states and industries, leaving some states still with a deficit while others have grown past 2019 levels.

On average, Black households engaged in entrepreneurial activity have a higher rate of return on their business in comparison to Hispanic and white households, according to an Economic Commentary from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Public policy encouraging and supporting minority entrepreneurship and innovation pays profits as well as social dividends, the study reveals.