Regional Economic Development

The incubator, part of Boise State University’s West Valley Campus near the Idaho Center, now has 17 resident business clients ranging from a biotechnology firm to an online shopping mall.

Local business leaders traveled to Seattle last week and met with UW medical school staff to push for the study, which they hope will eventually lead to establishment of a full program to train doctors in Spokane.

"You can actually go broke if you do economic development wrong," said Bill Sellers, director of TechConnect East in the Idaho Innovation Center.

Colorado is poised as a regional center for biotechnology research and development but likely won’t become home to large-scale manufacturing, sales or marketing forces, according to a study by the Milken Institute, an independent economic think tank.

The report represents the culmination of a successful year of accompishments under the organization’s five year strategic plan.

the study found that Boise, similar in size to Spokane, has lots in common with one of the most successful knowledge-based economies in the United States: California’s Silicon Valley.

A whitewater park in Colorado along Golden’s Clear Creek brings an estimated $1.4 million a year into the community through hotel, restaurant and other revenue, according to one consulting firm’s study. And promoters say the parks’ advantages go beyond the bottom line by helping improve river quality.

"It’s an important thing, a timely thing, a coming together and recognition that we are a region," said Larry Paulson, Port of Vancouver’s executive director.

The rate of patent growth is almost one-quarter higher than the national rate. Technology employment is within one percent of the national average, and federally performed R&D in the south nearly doubled the national rate in the last three decades

On Tuesday, Lance Morgan, chief executive of Ho-Chunk Inc. in Winnebago, Neb., will assume a nearly full-time advisory role to the head of the BIA to help reshape bureau policy and economic development.