The Texas Legislature approved, and the Governor has signed, a bill that will give extended life and a cash transfusion to the Texas Enterprise Fund, the state’s premiere incentive fund for new and expanding businesses. The new fund will contain a minimum of $140 million, with a good possibly of increasing to $180 million.

Legislation also created an additional fund, the Emerging Technology Fund, aimed at encouraging and expanding research and commercializing new products in Texas. The fund will be used to create Regional Centers of Innovation and Commercialization as well as to recruit outstanding research faculty to Texas universities and provide matching research grants. This fund is guaranteed at $100 million with a potential increase to $200 million.

The Texas Enterprise Fund is a “deal-closing” fund that has emboldened Governor Rick Perry, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst and Speaker Tom Craddick to compete with vigorously with other states in the competition for jobs. The Enterprise Fund will bring in 28,000 jobs and $6.3 billion in capital investment in Texas in the next 10 years, a very remarkable feat. The Emerging Technology Fund is a new program that will draw technology from our research colleges and universities to create new companies and products, instead of just securing existing companies to Texas. The Texas pipeline is full of wonderful opportunities to commercialize.

For example, in May 2005, the University of Texas at Austin Office of Technology Commercialization unveiled 11 new technologies that are patented and “ready to commercialize”, not to mention the 181 identified technologies that are also now available.

In years past, the best of these innovations have been plucked away by other states and effectively taken jobs away from Texans. But Gov. Perry and his team, the Texas Technology Initiative, envisioned the Emerging Technology Fund as a vehicle to stimulate innovation in Texas’ universities and transfer those stunning innovations into new Texas jobs. With Governor Perry’s leadership, Texas stands atop the country, according to Site Selection Magazine, as the best place to do business and he is paving the way toward keeping Texas a global leader in technological innovation.

For more information on Austin, contact Dave Porter, Vice President for Economic Development at 512.322.5650 or dporter@austinchamber.com.