Trends andNews

Entrepreneurial activity in the US holds steady
    Entrepreneurial activity in the US held steady in 2002 after a sharp drop in 2001, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), an annual study of entrepreneurship and economic growth funded by the Kauffman Foundation and conducted by Babson College.
    In 2002, more than one in 10 Americans were creating or growing new businesses - a figure 50 percent higher than shown by GEM's 1998 survey. 37 percent of respondents were optimistic about the climate for starting a new business.
    The GEM report can be viewed at http://www.kauffman.org.

2003-04 Government Tech Spending Update
    California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and City of Phila Governments lay out technology spending plans. Click "Tech Reports" at www.pjmathison.com to see the pjmathison firm's FY04 Gov't Technology Investment Reports©. "Early listings, analyses and tips on upcoming tech procurement & investment."

In the July issue of Plants Sites & Parks

Avoiding Location Pitfalls http://www.bizsites.com/2003/article.asp?id=412

Finding labor "can be a challenge, especially when you're looking for high-tech workers."
http://www.bizsites.com/2003/article.asp?id=410

U.S. electronics industry still treading water, but in Asia, chip makers are investing billions in facilities and infrastructure. http://www.bizsites.com/2003/article.asp?id=416

Foreign automakers' investments boost the East South Central region.  http://www.bizsites.com/2003/article.asp?id=400

Workshop on Technological Forecasting

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 01:54:09 -0600
From: Rich <Rich@mignogna.us>
Reply-To: Rich@temi.com
Subject: Tech Forecasting Workshop
    I'm very pleased to announce that TEMI will soon be offering a new edition of our popular workshop on Technological Forecasting for Science & Technology Intelligence this fall.  The course will be held October 1-3, 2003 at the Table Mountain Inn in Golden, Colorado... the site of many of our previous courses.  
    In this intensive 2-1/2 day workshop you will learn proven analytical techniques for:

• Predicting future directions and likely developments in a given technology.
• Assessing the technical capability of your competitors.
• Predicting substitution of a new technology, innovation, or product for an existing one.  

    Those who have attended this course in the past can attest that the Table Mountain Inn, with its southwestern architecture and wonderful food, provides an affordable yet charming venue for the workshop.  Nestled against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Table Mountain Inn and the town of Golden are a comfortable and quite change from the traditional megaconference hotel.  
    A course outline and registration information can be found on the TEMI website at http://www.temi.com/TFWorkshopFlyer.html .  Please feel free to forward this message to any of your colleagues whom you feel may be interested.  And, as always, anyone with any questions should feel free to contact me directly by phone or email.
    Thanks for your help in getting this announcement circulated to those who may have an interest.
Regards,
Rich Mignogna

May 22 'PolymerOhio' Event
    Dr. Luis M. Proenza, president of The University of Akron, spoke on “The Polymer Clusters of Innovation Initiative: Regional Foundations of U.S. Competitiveness” at a PolymerOhio conference on Wednesday, May 22. Attendees learned from Ohio's polymer leaders about the cluster concept, how to position companies for profit and growth, what product strategies allow for higher margins, and how to start or expand a business. http://www.polymerohio.org.
 
Infrastructure can't keep pace with business in Indian high-tech city
    Potholed roads, traffic jams, power outages, interrupted Internet, and water shortages are plaguing Bangalore, the high tech mecca in India’s Karnataka state. One company, Wipro, has given up on expanding its outsourcing businesses in Bangalore. "It is embarrassing when there are four power cuts during one hour of discussion with clients," says Wipro’s president.
    Eleven years after the government announced it would build an international airport in Bangalore, ground has yet to be broken for the project.
    Bangalore's population grew 42% between 1981 and 2001.  1.8 million vehicles jam the city’s roads, and newly built highway bridges and circular roads are making traffic worse rather than better.  With a population of 53 million, Karnataka state has only about 6,000 megawatts of power generation capacity, or 1,200 megawatts less than what it needs. Can Bangalore can justify its claims to be the "Silicon Valley of India"? "From the infrastructure viewpoint," one government official says, "it can't."  (S. Srinivasan of Associated Press reported this story on September 9, 2003.)

Gaeseong industrial park seen as symbol of reconciliation
    Gaeseong, a city of 400,000 just north of the Demilitarized Zone, is the site of a new industrial park intended to host businesses from both North and South Korea, and serve as a step toward better relations between the two regimes.
    Some 900 South Korean businesses have applied for spots in the industrial zone, hoping to get a foothold in an untapped market and benefit from cheap labor. North Korea says it will promote light and high-tech industries at Gaeseong.
    Investors will receive tax and other benefits, but will be required to build communications facilities and other infrastructure.  Land will be subsidized. (KOREA Now, July 12, 2003 pp.10-11)

Innovative partnership transforms BAFB
    In 1995, San Antonio’s Brooks Air Force Base was up for closure.  Locals decided to find a way "not to let Washington decide our fate." The result, Brooks City-Base, represents an unprecedented partnership between a municipality and the U.S, Air Force. Congress approved the legislation that authorized the project in June 2001. The joint venture between the military and civilian agencies enables the Air Force to continue its activities at the former Air Force Base, while giving the Brooks Development Authority (BDA) the responsibility to maintain the property and attract businesses and new commercial development on the surplus land and facilities within the 1,300-acre complex.
    This kind of approach has never been taken before, and other regions are watching for signs of success. Now BDA is trying to leverage the base’s physical and intellectual assets to attract commercial activities that will yield synergy. Brooks is home to the 311th Human Systems Wing, the Air Force's "ergonomic business." Possible partners include Toyota (with its big presence in San Antonio and its interest in ergonomic automobiles) and furniture company Herman Miller. (Plants Sites & Parks, September 2003, P.59)

Switzerland becomes high tech distribution center
    World Trade, September 2003, p. 64:  DuPont, 3M, Medtronic, Motorola, John Deere, Hewlett Packard and others either are shipping to the bulk of their European and further destinations out of this small country, or they are basing their control centers there. The magazine cites these success factors: Air cargo infrastructure in Geneva and Zurich, reliable railroads, Switzerland's 400 banks and central location on the continent, labor laws that are more in line with the U.S. than other European countries, the presence of international organizations and high-tech companies, free ports in major cities, a moderate level of taxation for locally earned income, light taxation of foreign operating income and exemption of holding tax income. Geneva and Zurich have international airports and there are about 50 other airports and landing sites in the country. See http://hightech.gza.ch for a database of these activities in Switzerland.


UC San Francisco is an innovation machine
    BusinessWeek, September 8, 2003, p. 102: The University of California at San Francisco is a quiet but remarkably productive source of new biotechnologies and biomedical advances.  Two success factors  have attracted some of the brightest and productive minds to UCSF. Stanford Medical School's decision to move from San Francisco to Palo Alto led to many doctors and scientists eventually making the switch to UCSF.  Bill Rutter, hired in 1969 to head UCSF's  then-modest chemistry department, institutionalized the practice of collaborative research on a grand scale. Rutter believed the best way to  encourage discovery was by grouping researchers who shared a common interest instead of lumping specialties together by department.


VC firms face enhanced disclosure
    San Francisco Chronicle, August 30, 2003: “A ruling in a University of California suit could force public institutions out of venture capital pools.  Advocates demanding greater disclosure about how venture funds are managed prevailed in a key hearing Thursday in state superior court in Oakland in their suit against the University of California. The suit seeks to force VCs to divulge information about the performance of their individual venture investments. Disclosing how their privately held investments perform is anathema to venture capital firms. They say such data can be used to value the private companies invested in by those funds. Those valuations are closely guarded secrets among venture firms.”
    Technopolis Times editorial comment:  The fact that public institutions are subject to open-records rules is a recurring problem in the accelerating efforts to quickly commercialize university and government lab technologies.

Business Week comes out against secret trade negotiations
    "Complex trade agreements, which increasingly affect the entire U.S. economy and require changes in U.S. laws and social policies, should not be considered in secret, or in isolation from all other legislation."  ("Commentary" by Paul Magnusson, July 21, 2003, p.54)

Report from the Northwest

Business tax reduced in Portland
    Mayor Vera Katz of Portland has announced a FY03-04 city budget surplus of $11.4 million.  This one-time resource will be used to reduce taxes for Portland businesses and help spur economic recovery.  In particular, it will eliminate the remaining business license fee surcharge that was used to give Portland Public Schools a full school year last year.  See http://www.ci.portland.or.us/mayor.

Land shortage and reputation hurt Portland ED
    The Oregonian, Wednesday, August 20: Portland has redoubled its corporate recruiting but continues to lose new companies because of the city's shortage of buildable industrial land and tarnished business reputation, Portland Development Commission officials told the City Council. Marty Harris, the Commission's economic development director, said unstable school financing, public services and business taxes are making prospects wary. For industries, the lack of available land is the number-one obstacle, she said.

Washington County leaders vote to abolish Intel impact fee
    The Oregonian, Wednesday, August 20: Intel, Oregon's largest employer, and county leaders agreed in 1999 to a deal that gave the semiconductor maker $200 milllion in tax breaks on a super-sized Hillsboro manufacturing complex. The 15-year pact included an employee tax that required the company to pay $1,000 a year for each full-time manufacturing employee in the county in excess of 5,000. The fee was designed to cover extra workers' stress on county schools and roads. The computer chip giant has just announced it will spend $400 million to revive an aging factory in Aloha, Oregon.  The Washington County board discontinued the head tax today.

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Jargon watch: Machinima (mini-movies created using 3-D game engines).

Best quote:  When you graduate college, they tell you to follow your dream.  What they rarely mention is that you have to wake up first.  (Bill Cosby)

Editorials

As we surf the web’s technopolis pages this month, we find two dismaying trends. 
    First, some writers are using “technopolis” to suggest a dehumanized and dehumanizing pocket of high technology.  Do you feel invaded by highway traffic cameras in your city, and monitored email in your workplace?  By co-workers who email you at all hours?  By your own new-found urge to stay up at night doing business email?  Blame it on the technopolis!  This unfortunate usage, parallel to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” of eighty years ago, is in complete contrast to the way we use the word here at Technopolis Times.  To us, technopolis is a strategy by which people can get the quality of life and standard of living they want.  As usual, Kevin Kelly says it better than we can: “Technopolis is a good dream. It is a far better vision than the Metropolis nightmare…. In Technopolis the hand and head seem to appreciate the heart.”
    The second trend we note is Craig Barrett going around anointing technopoleis.  News items appear, saying the Intel chief has made a speech in West Jepip or Lower Wannabevia, lauding the local technology business base and predicting they’ll be the next Silicon Valley.  The sly implication that the chip giant will build an installation there if the West Jepipians just keep up the good work, results in a new civic web site and a press release announcing the Greater West Jepip Technopolis.  Only one news story, never any follow-up…
    No need to carry this ironic tone any farther; suffice it to say that industry chieftains making such speeches have a certain self-interest, and that technopolis building requires a balanced, long-term commitment - not just a blessing from a traveling medicine man.

Technopolis Times’ Creed
* Innovation creates sustainable wealth in metropolitan regions where there is easy interaction among the education, government, business, financial, transportation, telecomm, press, arts & entertainment, nonprofit/NGO, and tourism sectors.
* Wealth is enhanced when these metro regions network with each other, especially across national borders.
* The keys to success are entrepreneurship; critical-mass clusters in strategic industries; social capital; and civic activism.
Technopolis Times is here to help aspiring regions succeed. 

You Just Missed

- 7th International Conference on Technology Policy & Innovation June, 2003 in Monterrey, Mexico
- PICMET '03, Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology, was held in July.
- The Academy of Management now has a Technology & Innovation Management section.  The Academy met in Seattle in August.
- International Economic Development Council 2003 Conference.  September 14-17, 2003, Cincinnati, OH.

Ted's lawyer wants to remind you that Technopolis Times 'Trends and News' and 'Issues & Events' are compilations of 3rd-party reports.  Technopolis Times and General Informatics LLC are not responsible for their accuracy.
 
 

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