innovation

Tuesday’s elections resulted in a Democratic majority in the House, but the changes for the next Congress go far beyond this outcome. Flipping party control means new chairs for every committee in the House; many Senate Republicans in leadership positions are reaching their party’s term limits, yielding new committee seniority; and, retirements and incumbent losses yield further changes. For the bipartisan issues of science and innovation, this shake up will produce new opportunities and uncertainties.

SSTI has reviewed the ballot initiatives across the country that affect innovation. Several states have energy initiatives on their ballots, while higher education funding is at play in Maine, Montana, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Utah could become only the second state to fund its schools through gas taxes, if a measure there is passed. At the same time, four states have ballot issues addressing redistricting commissions which could have a significant impact on state legislative makeup when lines are redrawn after the 2020 census.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is funding a program to better connect entrepreneurs, industry and investors with inventions from federally funded R&D. NIST has created a partnership with National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and will invest $1.7 million of its Lab to Market funding to complete the project.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced two new manufacturing prizes as part of the Manufacturing Innovator Challenge, an effort to crowdsource solutions for next generation manufacturing, to increase energy productivity and strengthen America's industrial base. Both prizes focus on additive manufacturing: Additive Manufacturing for Disaster Response and Solid State Lighting Manufacturing. Participants will be asked to share designs that represent an innovation in each respective application of additive manufacturing. 

Still treated as a novelty by most mainstream U.S. media, there is growing global use of nature-inspired innovations to deal with a number of challenges and undesired properties of business-as-usual, whether it be infrastructure, agriculture or product design, production, use or disposal. Collectively comprising a number of approaches —such as biomimicry, green chemistry, or regenerative manufacturing — nature-inspired innovation incorporates design and use principles borrowed from and complementary to nature.  The most promising aspects of all of these efforts are their economic value and efficiency compared to life cycle analyses of similar products and processes development through conventional means.

This week we continue our four-part series focused on navigating innovation priorities in a variety of settings. With the 2018 elections less than three weeks away and 36 states facing gubernatorial races, this week we focus on how to make innovation a priority with your governor. SSTI spoke with C. Michael Cassidy, director of the new Emory Biomedical Catalyst, and Christine Smith, managing director of innovation, Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, about their experiences in working with their states’ governors over the years.

This month, we begin a four-part series focused on navigating innovation priorities in a variety of settings. The series features perspectives from experts in the field, presented in a Q&A format. Each practitioner we interviewed will also be presenting at our annual conference, where these topics will be explored in greater depth. Click here for more information on the conference.

Twenty-four local economic development entities, Small Business Technology Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, incubators, accelerators, colleges and universities were granted $125,000 by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program. The 24 grant recipients, including seven that are members of SSTI (boldfaced below), provide support to small businesses developing and commercializing high-risk technologies.

The National League of Cities is asking local public, private, and civic leaders to make new, measurable, and impactful commitments to increasing the adoption of technology, improving the climate for entrepreneurship, and expanding youth and adult opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at the local level. By making a commitment, NLC invites cities to take part in its City Innovation Ecosystems program, which seeks to help local leaders achieve their goals by marketing and branding best practices, providing technical assistance, promoting peer learnings, and connecting cities to national private and philanthropic partners. NLC will highlight accepted commitments at its City Summit in Los Angeles from November 7-10.

After 20 years of a program that had supported innovation in the state of Kentucky, the governor said he wanted to consolidate the funding to support entrepreneurs and become more strategic in the state’s efforts. This month, the state unveiled a new program — Regional Innovation for Startups and Entrepreneurs (RISE), a strategy that unites each area’s most powerful economic drivers, prioritizes commercialization and promotes rapid scaling.  The new strategy is designed to decrease duplication of efforts and get investments more directly to entrepreneurs, said Brian Mefford, the executive director of KY Innovation.