on January 12, 2016
The 2016 awards cycle has just opened for the Innovations in American Government Awards administered by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. The purpose of this prestigious awards program is to recognize creative and innovative government programs that have significant impact and are replicable nationally.
As in previous years, I am serving as an advisor/recruiter in the community and economic development section of the IAG awards. I am particularly eager to see excellent submissions from programs in innovation- or technology-based economic development, but I am also interested in anchor institution programs managed by state or local government. If you have a candidate to recommend, you may contact me or submit an application directly.
Only programs administered under the authority of one or more governmental units are eligible to apply, and the application must come from a governmental unit. If the program you want to nominate is operated by a nonprofit in a public/private partnership, please allow me to connect you directly to program staff to discuss eligiblility.
The application deadline is April 15, 2016.
Tagged as:
Government,
IAG,
Innovation
on February 13, 2015
As a counterpart to my metropolitan geography database for the U.S., which receives dozens of hits a day, I have added a directly analogous database for European geographies, which may be useful for economic analysts or other wanting a quick overview. This tool presents several tables that organize European geographic taxonomies in a way that is not easily available on EU or national statistical agency websites.
As with the U.S. database, this one holds almost no demographic data. It exists simply to exhibit the relationship among the various geographies and taxonomies. The tables are populated with 2013 Eurostat definitions of NUTS (Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics). Instructions/troubleshooting/caveats are here. Comments/corrections are welcome.
on May 27, 2014
In an important piece of research recently released, two smart analysts have put numbers to what many of us active in economic development in New York State have long been saying: there exists a deep, fundamental mismatch between the stylistic preferences of regionally based venture-capital firms and the kinds of innovation emerging from the state’s university R&D community.
The study by Judy Albers and Tom Moebus – both well known and respected players in the statewide innovation ecosystem ((Judy, now an entrepreneurship professor at SUNY Geneseo co-founded the Pre Seed Workshop program, and Tom runs several innovation programs for the SUNY Research Foundation)) – employs data from NVCA and other sources to nail the case that while the amount of venture capital under management in New York City is rising, it is specializing heavily in digital technologies (IT, software, media) and focusing on capital-efficient “quick hits,” often at the expansion phase, with high potential for fast liquidity and outsized returns. Almost none of that potential is available upstate, and consequently almost no regionally managed capital goes there.
The authors show that while the VC industry in California and Massachusetts is more eclectic in its tastes, only a very small share of that money comes to New York to begin with, and exceptionally little makes its way upstate. That leaves ventures in what Albers and Moebus call the hard sciences (subdivided into the engineering technologies and life sciences) a long, hard slog with few early-stage investors (and almost no seed investors) either based here or deploying money anywhere in the state.
[continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Commercialization,
Engineering,
NYC,
NYS,
SUNY,
technology
