benchmarking report

North Carolina is gaining ground nationally in its innovation capacity and the number of innovation-oriented establishments in the state has increased by twice the national rate, according to a new report from the North Carolina Board of Science, Technology and Innovation.

While the U.S. continues to lead the world in science, technology and innovation, other nations are on track to catch and surpass the lead the country currently holds, according to a new report from the Task Force on American Innovation (TFIA). In Second Place America? Increasing Challenges to U.S. Scientific Leadership, TFIA, a non-partisan alliance of leading American companies and business associations, research university associations, and scientific societies, benchmarks the U.S.

The latest Science and Engineering Indicators from NSF’s National Science Board shows the U.S. share of S&T activities declining as other nations like China continue to rise. The report presents a wealth of data on how science and engineering R&D are tied to economic and workforce development, including indicators in education; workforce; R&D; industry, technology and the global marketplace; invention, knowledge transfer, and innovation; and public attitudes and understanding.

The development of common metrics is increasingly used at the state and regional level as a method to ensure the coordination of likeminded stakeholders. While choosing which metrics to use is at the root of this process, identifying ways in which to communicate this information to interested parties is also important. With an emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, this article highlights the ways in which governments and nonprofits are using dashboards to highlight their successes, identify their shortcomings, and gather data to inform next steps.

Six states received A's for the health of their manufacturing sector in a new study from Ball State University (BSU) – Conexus Indiana 2015 Manufacturing and Logistics National Report.

Between 1998 and 2010, impact investment funds outperformed funds of the same size, according to the Wall Street Journal. Impact-focused funds of $100 million or less posted a 9.5 percent pooled net internal rate of return, outperforming the 4.5 percent delivered by funds of the same size that were not focused on impact investments.

SYNEVA Economics – a consulting firm focused on local and regional economic analysis – released a free-to-use, web-based tool that allows users to examine monthly change in employment for the United States’ largest metros from January 2008 to May 2015. Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the Metro Employment Index interactive dashboard includes a mapping function that allows users to examine monthly employment data for all 387 metros.

Business owners felt overwhelmingly optimistic about the future, as over 80 percent of them predicted their revenues would increase over the next three months and that financial conditions would be better as well, according to a new survey from Thumbtack.com and Bloomberg  Professional Service.

In 2014, Angel groups in the Great Lakes region invested more dollars than anywhere else in the country, 17.2 percent of the U.S. total, including angel groups in California (17 percent). This marks the first time a U.S.

The U.S. is home to more than 28.4 million small businesses (less than 500 employees), employing over 56 million workers (approximately half of the nation’s workforce), according to a recently released a report entitled Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories, an annual analysis of each state’s small businesses.