The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate. Companies and organizations that don’t innovate today may not be around tomorrow. The Obama Administration recognizes the vital importance of supporting innovation, and the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration has been at the forefront of those efforts through its Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Today, Assistant Secretary Jay Williams visited the Rutgers campus to announce that the University is among the recipients of the Science and Research Parks Development Grants, the last grants being issued under the 2014 Regional Innovation Strategies Program (RIS). Secretary Pritzker announced the recipients of the other two funding opportunities, the i6 Challenge grants and Cluster Grants for Seed Capital Funds,  in March.

RIS funds programs that support innovators and entrepreneurs from idea formation to proof-of-concept through to early-stage funding, company formation, commercialization, scaling, and job creation. Each of the grant programs under the RIS represents a different stage: Science and Research Parks are the place; i6 is the program; and Seed Capital Funds provide the financing. Economic development is a continuum, and economic development to foster innovation is no different.

Our Science and Research Park Development grants provide early funding for communities and organizations to conduct feasibility studies and other planning activities. It offers them an opportunity to evaluate the assets in their region, identify their clusters, and assess what type of Science and Research Park – if any – makes sense for the area.  The program supports innovation by helping state and local governments, universities, and nonprofits plan the creation or expansion of a place, where innovators work to develop the new ideas that become tomorrow’s products and services. Under RIS, we have awarded 12 Science and Research Park Development Grants, totaling nearly $5 million.

The i6 Challenge supports the commercialization of those ideas by funding organizations that facilitate and accelerate the process of creating prototypes from ideas and of developing sustainable companies from prototypes. i6 is a national competition that makes small, targeted, high-impact investments to support startup creation, innovation, and commercialization. Now that the i6 Challenge, in its 4^th iteration, is included in the new RIS Program, the funding will support more than just Proof-of-Concept Centers. Investments will also go toward the expansion of existing centers and in later-stage Commercialization Centers, which help innovators fine tune and scale their innovations to bring new products and services to the market.

Early access to capital is crucial for startups, but can be difficult to obtain outside traditional startup hubs. Cluster Grants for Seed Capital Funds support organizations that provide early-stage funding/capital to startup companies, which allows those startups to scale into high-growth, sustainable ventures. They provide technical assistance funding to support the feasibility, planning, formation, or launch of cluster-based seed capital funds, which will help improve access to capital for entrepreneurs across the United States. 

RIS provides funding at every critical juncture, and the demand for the program underscores just how much need there is. EDA received more than 240 applications, totaling nearly $100 million in funding requests for this $15 million program. Innovation is crucial to supporting the economy, and EDA is helping to provide crucial support for innovation.

The full list of RIS grant recipients is available on the Regional Innovation Strategies page of EDA’s website.