Matthew Nemerson met with representatives of the OSTP to discuss the President’s Startup America and JumpStart America efforts while in Washington DC on February 16 to take part the first ever Innovation Coalition Capitol “fly-in”.
The Coalition is made up of various national trade associations including TECNA (the Technology Councils of North America) of which Matthew is currently the volunteer President of the Board of Directors. Other members of the coalition include ACA (Angel capital), SSTI (tech policy), NASVF (seed and venture funds), NBIA (incubators), AURP (Unversity research parks) and AUTM (University technology managers). [link to slide deck].
The meeting with the OSTP was to work out ways the group can work with the Obama Administration to help target funding for the development of regional “innovation eco-systems” around the country and to coordinate future grant programs for innovation from the SBA and EDA.
About 150 represenbtives of the coalition including the heads of seven tech councils attended the meeting and heard from Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR); Representative John R. Sarbanes (D-MD), John Fernandez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, Phil Singerman, Associate Director (AD) for Innovation and Industry Services, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and former Yale Law student and Yale Entrepreneurship Institute graduate Doug Rand, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Dan Berglund, President and CEO, State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI) and Matthew addressed the larger group as well.
Afterwards Matthew met with the new staff of Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and talked personally with Senator Joe Lieberman.
The topics addressed in the morning session included the America Competes Act , national Angel Tax Credit concepts, the importance of innovation for sustainable job creation and worries about decreases in budgets for critical agencies such as NIST, NSF and NIH.
Special thanks to CompTIA for that groups sponsorship of the day.