Closing Critical Gaps from Lab to Market
Summary
Closing critical gaps across the interconnected ecosystem that supports discoveries in science and technology (S&T), developing discoveries into promising inventions, and commercializing inventions into thriving businesses should be of top priority for federal policymakers. In brief, intentional focus and dedicating resources to discovery and commercialization of inventions ensures that the United States maintains and expands its economic vitality, its global leadership in S&T innovation, and its strategic entrepreneurial advantages. This proposal presents a rationale and vision for the launch and deployment of a national plan—called Innovate the Future: The American Inventors Initiative—to provide comprehensive support and acceleration paths for postdoctoral researchers, early-stage entrepreneurs, and S&T investors, in order to advance domestic economic growth.
Interagency Community Investment Committee agencies should partner with the Small Business Administration to use their existing authority and infrastructure to pilot a secondary market for their securitized debt instruments.
There are exciting things ahead for communities that participated in the NSF Engines grant program, even for those that missed out on securing funding.
At the beginning of April, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a landmark report outlining the scope of federal investments in regional ecosystems, something we have written about at FAS in the past. This CRS report, ‘Regional Innovation: Federal Programs and Issues for Consideration,’ does an excellent job covering the scope and scale of our massive federal investment […]
Economic innovation requires more sophisticated, focused, and better supported local economic planning. Here’s how to achieve it.