Connecticut Technology Council

Mayor Drew visits China to bring potential investors to Middletown

MIDDLETOWN — Mayor Dan Drew is returning this weekend from a week-long trip to China meant to recruit possible investors for the Aetna property specifically and Middletown in general.

The week-long trip took the delegates through Beijing, Shanghai and the industrial and technology manufacturing cities in the state of Shandong.

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Also Check out this Article on CTC's  Blog 

Tech Trends - article picks from SSTI staff, Week of 03/26/12

Most Americans Doubt U.S. Will Lead In S&T Through 2020, Survey Shows 
Only 42 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. will maintain its dominance in science and technology through 2020, according to a recent survey by Research America. Americans also appear to expect that this change will have dire consequences. Sixty-four percent believe that it is important that the U.S. lead in R&D, and 78 percent believe that S&T leadership is important to U.S. competitiveness. Science, innovation and health ranked above "the environment" and "faith and values" in importance for future presidential debates, according to survey respondents. Read the report...

Battle over Regulating Crowd funding in JOBS Act 
Investors and entrepreneurs argue the old securities paradigm doesn't work for regulating crowd funding while state regulators are urging added protection for investors. Read more ...

Crowdfunding Platform Dedicated to Scientific Research 
Petridish.org allows only science entrepreneurs to pitch ideas to the open web in exchange for a 5 percent cut for successfully funded projects Read more ...

Are Small Businesses Really the Job Creators? 
Seeking advice from four experts in labor and small business, this article examines whether or not government support for small businesses is the best way to climb out of the recession. Read more ...

World's Work Force Rapidly Shrinking 
Nearly half the world's population is living in countries with birthrates below the replacement level. Rapidly aging Japan has one of the worst demographic profiles. Read more ...

Higher Enrollment, Less Funding for Higher Ed in 2011 
The ninth annual State Higher Education Finance survey finds funding for public colleges and universities continued to decrease between 2010 and 2011. Read more ...

Stateline: Higher Education Funds Begin Slow Recovery 
On the upside, experts say the number of states boosting higher education funding is expected to increase this year. In some cases, this comes with strings attached in the form of performance-based funding.Read more ...

Conference Promotes Innovative Data Sources for Regional Economic Analysis 
The GW Institute of Public Policy conference on May 7-8 also offers data-providing organizations the opportunity to interact with and get feedback from users Read more ...

Attributed to: State Science and Technology Institute

Massachusetts releases its "2011 Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy"

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's John Adams Innovation Institute has released its 2011 Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, an annual review of the Commonwealth's high-tech economy through 25 indicators. Each year, the index tracks Massachusetts' progress in these indicators, along with comparisons to other U.S. states and national economies. In addition to Massachusetts, the 2011 edition provides indicator data for comparison from seven leading technology states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Highlights from the 25 indicators include Industry cluster employment and wages, patenting activity, R&D performed, business formation, funding for R&D, and talent flow and attraction.

Massachusetts' innovation once again ranks impressively next to its benchmark state and national economies, though the report notes that several indicators have had a downward trend over the past few years. The state leads the U.S. in per capita venture capital and SBIR awards, but that lead has shrunk since 2000. Employment in the state increasingly has become concentrated in key innovation sectors, and maintained its high rate of entrepreneurship activity throughout the recession. Massachusetts must now find ways to better fund higher education and get its students interested in STEM fields.

Download the report...

U.S. Manufacturing Suffered Its Worse Decade Since the Great Depression, According to ITIF Report

"In the 2000s, U.S. manufacturing suffered its worst performance in American history in terms of jobs. Not only did America lose 5.7 million manufacturing jobs, but the decline as a share of total manufacturing jobs (33 percent) exceeded the rate of loss in the Great Depression," according to a new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). In Worse Than the Great Depression: What the Experts Are Missing About American Manufacturing Decline, ITIF contends that there is a fundamental flaw in the conventional wisdom regarding U.S. manufacturing job loss. Most economists, pundits and elected officials maintain manufacturing job loss is a result of productivity-driven restructuring, similar to the U.S. agriculture sector that has lost jobs but remains healthy due technology-driven increased productivity. However, the authors provide two methodological flaws that have led to poor data and shaped conventional wisdom:

• Most economists and pundits do not extend their analysis beyond one macro-level number — change in real manufacturing value-added relative to real gross domestic product — which at first glance appears stable; and,
• More fundamentally, U.S. government statistics significantly overstate the change in U.S. manufacturing output, and by definition productivity, in part because of massive overestimation of output growth in the computer and electronics sector and because of problems with how manufacturing imports are measured.

In drastic contrast to conventional wisdom, the authors contend that U.S. manufacturing job loss should be attributed overridingly to the decline in U.S. manufacturing output. Although productivity-driven restructuring plays a role in job loss in select manufacturing sectors, U.S. manufacturing productivity has been overstated and manufacturing outputs have fallen since 2000. Using alternative data analysis methods, the authors found several "corrections" to data regarding manufacturing in the 2000s that support their claims including:

• U.S. manufacturing labor productivity growth was overstated by a remarkable 122 percent;
• Although manufacturing output was reported as 16 percent rate increase, it actually fell by 11 percent; and,
• If manufacturing output had "grown at the same rate as that of the rest of the business sector," the U.S. currently would have approximately 13.8 million more jobs.

This drop in productivity is mostly the result of the failure of U.S. policies related to manufacturing and the lack of national manufacturing strategy, according to the authors. They also attribute some of the lost productivity to the policy of competing countries. Some countries have manipulated the international system through some manipulated by "egregious foreign mercantilist" policies. Most countries, however, have supported their manufacturing sectors through "better national competiveness policies," including significantly lower corporate tax rates.

By adopting policies related to the "four T's (Tax, Trade, Talent and Technology)," ITIF argues that the U.S. will regain its manufacturing competiveness and balanced its trade defecit in manufacturing products in less than a decade. This would lead to "millions of higher-than-average-wage manufacturing jobs, as well as an even greater number of jobs from the multiplier effect on other sectors of the economy." Read the report...

Attributed to: State Science & Technology Institute

Tech Trends - article picks from SSTI staff, Week of 03/19/12

U.S. Angel Investment More Diffuse than Venture Capital, According to Report 
Though California remains the leading state for U.S. angel investment, 79 percent of angel deals and 70 percent of angel dollars were invested outside of the state in 2011, according to the first edition of the new Halo Report. The report, produced by the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights, also found that the median size of angel and angel group syndicate rounds increased by 40 percent between 2010 and 2011, from $500,000 to $700,000. Read the full report...

President's Jobs Council Launches Campaign to Motivate Engineers 
The effort to connect engineering students with professionals in the field and help them graduate was launched yesterday on Facebook. Read more ...

YourEconomy.org Website Offers Enhanced Features 
New features of the redesign include National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) data for calendar years 1995 through 2005 and sales information for all establishment sectors and stages. Read more ...

Turning Researchers into Entrepreneurs 
Universities seeking to support aspiring entrepreneurs should look at training, access to incubators and introductions to the right people. Read more ...

TechStars Founder Launches $28M Fund to Help Startups 
The money will be fed into a fund called Bullet Time Ventures II with investments ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 and a focus on Internet software companies. Read more ...

Utah's Thriving Tech Industry Attracting Residents 
This article from NPR talks about the growing tech industry in Utah and how expanding job opportunities and Utah's way of life easily is attracting out-of-state residents. Read more ...

TX Higher Ed Panel Discusses $10K Bachelor Degree at SXSW 
Some college presidents in Texas say that a $10,000 college degree called for by Gov. Rick Perry in his State of the State address already is available with more coming in 2013. Read more ...

Attributed to: State Science & Technology Institute

Obama Administration Proposes New National Network to Support Manufacturing

President Obama announced the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, a propped $1 billion initiative to build a network comprised of up to fifteen Institutes for manufacturing innovation across the country. The proposed fifteen member institutes will serve as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence that will help make U.S. manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment. The administration also announced that it would take immediate steps to launch a $45 million pilot institute for manufacturing innovation.

Each institute should have a well-defined technology focus to address industrially-relevant manufacturing challenges on a large scale and to provide the capabilities and facilities required to reduce the cost and risk of commercializing new technologies. By investing in industrially-relevant manufacturing technologies with broad applications, the administration intends for these institutes to bring industry, universities and community colleges, federal agencies and U.S. states together. They also should work to bridge the gap between basic research and product development; provide companies with access to shared assets to help (e.g., cutting edge capabilities and equipment); and provide education and training in advanced-manufacturing related skills to students and workers. The competitively selected institutes would target several areas of innovation including, but not limited to:

• Developing lightweight materials;
• Refining standards, materials, and equipment for "3-D printing"; and,
• Creating a smart manufacturing infrastructure and approaches.

The administration also announced that it would take immediate steps to launch a pilot institute for manufacturing innovation. The $45 million pilot institute will be selected from a competitive application process and is intended to address "key challenges faced by the U.S. manufacturing sector" to reduce the risk and cost of commercializing and scaling-up new manufacturing products and processes.. Existing resources from the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation will be made available to support the pilot institute. Read the press release...

Attributed to: State Science & Technology Institute

Tech Trends - article picks from SSTI staff, Week of 03/12/12

FedDev Ontario Investment Connecting STEM Grads with Businesses 
A contribution of $4.2 million CAN ($4.2 million USD) by FedDev Ontario will be used to place 320 recent graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields with businesses in a competitive six-month internship and mentorship program. The idea is to provide graduates with real world opportunities to develop business skills and experience. The grads will be matched with small- and medium-sized enterprises in southern Ontario. Read the press release

#FixYoungAmerica to Overcome Youth Unemployment 
The movement has begun a crowd funding initiative and hopes to encourage and promote entrepreneurial education and share ideas through Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Read more ...

Tech Advances Helping Spur Interest in Entrepreneurship 
College students are embracing an entrepreneurial culture on campuses nationwide possibly due to advances in technology making it easier than ever before to start a business. Read more ...

Patent Office Contest Rewards Humanitarian Work with Faster Processing 
Patent owners who use their technology for humanitarian purposes will be rewarded with an acceleration certificate to speed up processing for any other patent matters at the USPTO. Read more ...

Commerce Department Swears in New Patent Judges to Help with Backlog 
Nine new patent judges were sworn in last week with the goal of reducing patent backlogs and helping entrepreneurs get ideas to the market faster. Read more ...

NLC: Innovation and Cities: Reframing the Dialogue 
Worried about the overuse of the term "innovation" in our national dialogue, this blog posting suggests ways to reframe conversations and debates about issues involving cities. Read more ...

Some States Going Non-Traditional Route for Job Creation 
Requiring matching commitments from private companies to rebuild highways and selling off future income tax from the state lottery and other more "obscure" sources are highlighted as creative ways states are looking to boost job growth. Read more ...

Attributed to: SSTI (State Science and Technology Institute)

IT-Intensive Firms Likely to Create More Jobs, Report Finds

Discovering the ideal conditions for entrepreneurs to succeed is a topic widely researched in today's economy. Most researchers will agree that having access to capital, a culture conducive for risk, and skilled workers are key components. A new report from the Technology CEO Council (TCC) adds that powerful and affordable new technologies, and companies that harness them, are at a greater advantage than ever before when it comes to driving job creation.

The report points to new research from Catherine L. Mann of Brandeis University indicating companies that were intensive users of IT grew jobs at a rate of 5.1 percent from 2001-09, while overall employment shrank by 0.5 percent. And, although small IT-intensive service firms represent only 5 to 6 percent of all employment, they averaged 34 percent of new jobs created between 2002 and 2008. The next gazelles, or high-growth enterprises, will be those businesses best able to use technology to pioneer new management techniques, capitalize on new production methods, exploit distribution channels and maximize organizational structures, according to the authors.

A combination of breakthrough innovations over the past several years has enabled more startups to succeed. The report points to on-demand supercomputing, low-cost, high-capacity data storage and ubiquitous, robust connectivity as three transformational breakthroughs. Technology also has played a role in how startups find financing with a wave of new Internet platforms that offer crowd funding.

In addition to being good at technology, the report indicates that having access to talented people, markets, and capital are the factors that best enable high-growth companies to succeed. Several policy recommendations are outlined in support of these factors. However, the take-away from the authors is that technology will prove even more essential to business success and survival in the future and those not taking advantage of new technologies will be left behind.

The report, High Impact: How IT is Empowering the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs, is available at:http://www.techceocouncil.org/clientuploads/reports/TCCHighImpact3-5-12[1].pdf.

Attributed to: SSTI (State Science and Technology Institute)

Tech Trends - article picks from SSTI staff, , Week of 03/05/12

U.S. Treasury Announces $3.6B in Awards for Distressed Communities 
The U.S. Department of Treasury recently announced the selection of 70 organizations from around the country to receive a total of $3.6 billion in New Markets Tax Credits awards. The awards may be used to provide individual and corporate taxpayers with a credit against federal income taxes for making equity investments in community development entities. Read the complete list of awardees...

U.S. Clean Tech Investment Held Steady in 2011 
U.S. venture firms invested $4.9 billion in clean tech companies last year, nearly the same as in 2010, according to a year-end report from Ernst & Young. Approximately 57 percent of all clean tech investment was directed toward California companies. The overall cleantech market was bolstered by five IPOs and 79 M&As.Read the release...

States May Divert Some Mortgage Settlement Money for Other Priorities 
In addition to helping homeowners, some states are looking to offset steep cuts in programs and services made over the past few years with the money they will receive under the settlement. Read more ...

Census Bureau Reports More Americans are College Grads than Ever Before 
More than 30 percent of adults age 25 or older have at least a bachelor's degree and more than one-third hold a degree in a science or engineering field. Read more ...

IBM Education Model Blends High School, College, Career 
The company outlines how Chicago and other cities successfully can implement six-year schools, allowing students to graduate with an associate's degree. Read more ...

Innovation Campuses Exploding in the Midwest 
Inside HigherEd finds many of the new campuses involving partnerships with public colleges and private corporations share the same goal of cohabitating academics and industry with hopes for increased tech commercialization and new jobs. Read more ...

Attributed to: SSTI (State Science and Technology Institute)

Lack of Government Support Hurts U.S. Clean Tech Industry, According to Report

Countries that put significant resources into supporting clean tech innovation are rewarded with more emerging and commercialized clean tech companies, according to Coming Clean: The Global Cleantech Innovation Index 2012 — a new report from the Clean Tech Group, LCC. The U.S. placed fifth out of 38 countries, with the top score for several indicators including research and development funding, general innovation drivers (i.e., Entrepreneurial culture and "general innovation inputs") and strong emerging clean tech innovation. However, in comparison to other top performers, the lack of strong government policies in support of clean tech hurt the overall health of the sector in the United States. Other indicators that the U.S. performed poorly in were renewable energy consumption and clean tech company revenues.

Denmark ranked first due to its unique combination of a supportive environment for innovative clean tech startups, evidence of those startups emerging as well as a strong track record of companies commercializing their clean tech innovations and widespread market adoption. Israel (2nd), Sweden(3rd) and Finland (4th) rounded out the top five due to support supportive environment and high concentration of new clean tech companies. However, due to their relative size they lack the ability to scale-up these companies.

Although China and India placed 13th and 12th respectively, they "stand out as having a strong potential to rise through the ranks in the coming years." In particular, China leads in clean tech manufacturing, is strong in early stage growth and shows potential to produce more early stage innovation in the future.

The Clean Tech Group developed the index comprised of 15 indicators related to the creation and commercialization of clean tech startups to measure the relative potential of each country to produce entrepreneurial clean tech startup companies and commercialize clean technology innovations over the next 10 years. The 15 indicators were divided between Inputs to Innovation (general innovation drivers and clean tech- specific innovation drivers) and Outputs of Innovation (evidence of emerging clean tech innovation and evidence of commercialized clean tech innovation). Read the report...

Attributed to: SSTI (State Science and Technology Institute)