A whole series of technology-based economic development programs have been launched by the states. This chapter deals with the evolution of these programs as well as with the preliminary results of a national survey of companies aimed at assessing their experience with these new state initiatives. It addresses the context of regional economic and political change to explain why a quiet revolution of sorts is taking place. Regional economic changes are cyclically sensitive, but changes in manufacturing employment reveal that some major structural changes have taken place and continue to take place in the American economy. Because of the variety of technology-based economic development programs launched by the states, the continued introduction of new programs, and the modification of existing ones, classification itself is not an easy task. The need for impact assessments is even more pressing in the case of the newer technology-based economic development programs where contradictions on evaluation are the result of casual empiricism.