Mills' fingerprints on the Obama FY11 budget vis-a-vis clusters

In February last year, I wrote in Mainebiz that SBA Adminstrator Karen Mills would be pushing for greater cross agency support for industry clusters--no predictive genius here...just paying attention to Mills' recommendations from her Brookings report. Brookings' Mark Muro notes in today's New Republic that this appears to be exactly what's happening in Obama's FY11 budget. EDA, SBA, USDA and DOL all have innovation/clusters initaitives.

Karen Mills is increasingly talking clusters

In 2006, I invited Karen Mills to join the board of a venture capital fund I manage. She agreed to join and then left in 2008 to join the Obama transition team; in April 2008, Karen was named as Administrator of the SBA. Karen has been a longtime advocate of regional industry/innovation clusters and has begun to speak more and more about her interest in the context of her new role. She's spent much of her first year dealing with TARP and working to reactivate credit markets. I've noted an increasing trend in her referencing industry/innovation clusters in that context. Here's a recent piece from thestreet.com.