Asserting that autonomous vehicles are poised to revolutionize both transportation and the way people live and work throughout the world, KPMG has developed a readiness index that evaluates 20 countries around the world according to four pillars. They include: policy and legislation; technology and innovation; infrastructure; and consumer acceptance.

Low-income students in the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) will be among the first allowed to use federal student aid to enroll in programs offered by nontraditional educational providers. The providers — including coding bootcamps, online courses, and employer organizations — are partnering with accredited colleges or universities through an experimental program called Educational Quality through Innovation Partnerships (EQUIP). The U.S.

The European Commission and European Investment Fund announced the creation of VentureEU – a fund-of-fund initiative intended to increase the availability of venture capital for the continent’s startup community. Through the VentureEU effort, the EU will invest approximately €410 million (approximately 507.8 million USD) across six funds run by established European fund managers.

In February, SSTI highlighted several state-led efforts to address the rural broadband gap, which affects more than 30 percent of rural America who currently lack access to adequate broadband service.

Startups and small businesses raised $30 million during the first year of equity crowdfunding (also known as regulation crowdfunding or Reg CF) with an average of $289,000 raised in a successful campaign, according to a recent report published by the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy.

With 36 governorships up for election — and more than half those open either due to retirements, term limits, or lost primaries — new faces were guaranteed in state offices across the country. As a result of Tuesday’s voting, 20 new governors will be taking office and 16 of 18 incumbent governors that were on the ballot on Tuesday will be serving another term (Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker were the only incumbent governors. defeated on Tuesday).

The 2018 general election Tuesday proved to be a better day for Republicans in state legislative races across the country than would have been expected based on average losses for a midterm election. That said, it was also a good day, for the most part, for the political parties already in control of the statehouse chambers, regardless of affiliation: more chambers holding elections this year saw the party in control increase its numbers than lose seats.

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) on Sunday announced what it is calling the “largest ever collaborative effort” to increase college access, close the achievement gap and award “hundreds of thousands” more degrees by 2025.

A community system and a technical college center were among the five recipients of the nation’s highest honor for quality, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announcement released this morning.  A third community college system received recognition for establishing and maintaining a best practice in leadership.

The two education institutions were:

The Federal Reserve System released a new digital book – Investing in America's Workforce: Improving Outcomes for Workers and Employers – that challenges the existing American mindset that treats workers as a cost to industry.

The New York state manufacturing report released this morning by the Federal Research Bank of New York is one of the brighter spots among the manufacturing surveys provided by the Fed banks each month.  Manufacturers in the Empire State remain fairly optimistic in the six-month outlook as new orders continued to grow, business conditions improved, and employment levels increased.

For communities hoping to start and register an apprenticeship program, a new toolkit by the Department of Labor may offer some insight. Launched as part of National Apprenticeship Week (Nov. 12-18, 2018), “Building Registered Apprenticeship Programs” provides a guide to help start and register your apprenticeship program.

While diversity plays a critical role in both improving the quality and increasing the rate of innovation, women and several minority groups remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Several studies find that improving the retention rate of women and other underrepresented groups in STEM at the college level can have significant impacts on improving the diversity and representativeness of the STEM workforce.

A new report from The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) released last week describes the misleading perceptions resulting from employment rates used by the three entities tasked with oversight of the U.S. higher education system and proposes two specific measurements that could better inform student choices.

In its latest report on the conditions of the states, the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) found that conditions continue to improve and show more stability, with funding expected to grow 4.3 percent in FY 2019. NASBO also reported that 40 states saw general fund revenue collections coming in higher than budget projections in fiscal 2018. General fund revenues grew 6.4 percent in fiscal 2018, due to an increase in personal income tax collections, and are projected to grow 2.1 percent in fiscal 2019.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has announced the first three projects for the state’s Innovation Campus Program, an effort to support the commercialization of academic research in key industries such as cybersecurity, data analytics and agricultural technology. The centers, in partnership with the University of Rhode Island and located in Kingston and Providence, will receive a combined $12 million from the state. The funding stems from a $20 million innovation bond approved by the state’s voters in 2016.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced more than $763 million for economic development projects throughout the state as part of the regional economic development council (REDC) competition. The program, which tasks leaders in 10 regions to determine economic development priorities, has awarded more than $6.1 billion across 7,300 projects since its inception in 2011. In each region, funding went toward projects such as infrastructure, main street revitalization, feasibility studies, strategic planning, microenterprise funds, and workforce development.

The latest Farm Bill, expected to be signed into law Thursday, contains provisions that could provide significant new tools for rural innovations. The two greatest opportunities are the Rural Innovation Stronger Economy (RISE) grant program, which creates an innovation cluster and strategy program for rural regions, and a change to allow the existing Community Facilities program to support incubators, makerspaces, and job training centers.

If catching up on your reading is a goal over the holidays or on your list of resolutions for next year, the staff at SSTI are sharing some of our favorite reads from the past year. Here we bring you our list of 2018 science, innovation, tech and entrepreneurship (adjacent) reads. Tell us what you think of the list — and what is on your list — by tweeting @ssti_org.

Dan Berglund, president & CEO

University-based centers to support collaborative research with industry have been a mainstay of federal competitiveness policies for decades.  Government commitments of multiyear, multimillion dollar funding are thought to provide lab/institutional stability and industry confidence for engagement in longer-term joint research projects.

Action toward improving the availability and speed of broadband in rural areas is emerging as an early theme in 2019, continuing activity from 2018. Oregon, Washington and the USDA all announced new initiatives last month. In mid-December, the USDA announced the availability of $600 million in grants and loans to support improvement of broadband accessibility across rural America. Funding is split into three equal pools.

One of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of state programs intended to encourage the success of SBIR applications is the approval-rate of their submissions. Although this data has been historically unavailable across every federal agency, it is now accessible for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the second largest provider of SBIR/STTR awards, according to a 2018 Digest report. The NIH distributed $446.2 million in SBIR/STTR awards in 2017, with every state except North and South Dakota receiving an award. Although California and Massachusetts had the most successful SBIR/STTR applications in 2017, accounting for roughly one-third of the total when combined, neither state ranked among the top 10 in success rate. NIH SBIR/STTR applications in Oregon (29 percent success rate), Vermont (25 percent success rate), and Wisconsin (23 percent success rate) were the most likely to be approved over the ten-year period from 2008 to 2017. Each of these states, as well as many others with high success rates, offer assistance with proposals such as technical support programs and Phase 0 grants.

A significant majority of SBIR and STTR grants awarded to small businesses from the National Institutes of Health in any given year end up in just a handful of states.

Several academic papers have been released recently focused on topics of importance for influencing the design and delivery of national and regional innovation policies. In this week’s issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, we’ve included brief summaries of the findings of four of them related to timely news topics – the relationship of trade and manufacturing employments, the likely longer term economic impact of the 2017 corporate tax cuts, ties between R&D and trade,  and  the relationship of patents to employee wages.

While Congress was unable to pass a budget before funding ran out, legislators did advance multiple innovation-related proposals. Here is a quick summary of what the lame duck session did (and did not do) for tech-based economic development.

New legislative activity during the lame duck session: