CASE STUDIES
We’ve been fortunate enough to work with clients in a range of industries, delivering growth strategy consulting, helping them to define their community investment strategies and build organizations that are the obvious choice in the hearts and minds of their customers, employees and the community. Below is an example of one of our successful projects.
NASA’s SPACE TECHNOLOGY MISSION DIRECTORATE REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
THE CHALLENGE
Innovation acceleration requires the bridging of a number of gaps in the U.S. innovation system, particularly the gap between research and development activities and technology diffusion to the private sector. Technological advancements and accelerating the rate of federal lab and university research to market are essential to ensure job growth and economic prosperity.
THE SOLUTION
Regionerate has been providing strategic guidance and implementation expertise for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate Regional Economic Development Program (RED) since its inception in 2012. The initiative that has spread across eight states engages regional partnerships to support both early-stage business development and high-growth potential companies. The regions have an opportunity to maximize results by collaboratively working to support start-ups and medium-sized companies with an abundance of service providers, including federal labs, universities, small business incubators, small business development centers, economic development organizations, angel networks and other entities that exist to help start and grow businesses.
Once the partners have been identified, NASA centers link to partnership intermediaries to help bridge NASA resources and enable them to form mutually beneficial relationships. With intermediaries, such as Chambers of Commerce and Manufacturing Extension Partnership Centers, companies can reach outside their firm quickly to find the assets they need to innovate and adapt to new market realities. Intermediaries can serve to broker resources often needed by regional innovation partnerships. The NASA Pilot focuses on Needs-Driven Matchmaking. We source the innovation “needs and wants” of end-users via peer review, competitions and follow-on assessments.
NASA has a long history of partnering with companies and universities to develop and commercialize new advanced technologies that have been the foundation of our nation’s economic success – from communications, to household products, the jet engine, and the Internet. RED builds on this foundation by providing companies access to NASA advanced technologies and subject matter experts (SME) that will speed up the process of taking ideas from the drawing board to the manufacturing floor, scaling-up first-of-a-kind technologies, and developing the infrastructure and shared facilities to allow firms to innovate and compete.