EAGER: Place-Based Innovation Policy Study Group

Project Outcomes Statement

This project examined how place-based innovation policy can be designed to strengthen regional innovation ecosystems and support long-term economic growth. The work was organized around the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program, a major federal effort to expand innovation capacity across U.S. regions. The project brought together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to assess the state of knowledge on regional innovation policy and to clarify the principles that should guide the design and implementation of these efforts.

Regional innovation ecosystems consist of interconnected institutions—including universities, firms, entrepreneurs, investors, government agencies, and other organizations—whose interactions shape the ability of a region to generate and commercialize new ideas. While place-based innovation policy has grown in importance, the evidence base remains fragmented across multiple literatures, including innovation economics, entrepreneurship, regional development, and public policy. This project sought to synthesize that evidence and create a more coherent framework for understanding how regional innovation policies operate and under what conditions they are likely to be effective.

The project had three main components. First, it convened a virtual reading group with NSF participants to discuss key research and policy questions related to place-based innovation, using the Regional Innovation Engines program as an organizing framework. Second, it organized an in-person workshop at NSF that brought together academic researchers, NSF staff, and policy practitioners working on regional innovation and economic development. Third, it produced a synthesis paper that reviewed the literature on regional innovation ecosystems, identified the main mechanisms through which policy may shape regional outcomes, and assessed the strength of the available evidence.

The principal research output of the project was the paper Accelerating Innovation Ecosystems: The Promise and Challenges of Regional Innovation Engines (Guzman, Murray, Stern, and Williams 2024), published in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy. The paper provides a structured overview of how regional innovation ecosystems function, the rationale for public intervention, and the practical challenges involved in designing ecosystem-building policies. It also identifies open questions for future research, especially regarding the conditions under which place-based policies can strengthen regional innovation capacity and entrepreneurship.

The project also supported follow-on research. In particular, research assistant Alexis Haughey contributed to new work on how regional stakeholders assess innovation ecosystems and how smaller or more rural regions develop into innovation clusters. This work expanded the project’s contribution from conceptual synthesis to original empirical research on ecosystem measurement and regional strategy.

Intellectual Merit
The project advances research in innovation economics, entrepreneurship, and place-based policy by organizing a fragmented literature into a clearer conceptual framework and linking that framework to an active national policy initiative. It strengthens the connection between scholarship and policy design, helps define a more rigorous research agenda on regional innovation ecosystems, and provides a foundation for future empirical work on how place-based innovation policies affect regional outcomes.

Broader Impacts
The broader impacts of the project arise from improving the design and implementation of regional innovation policy in the United States. By helping policymakers and practitioners better understand how innovation ecosystems develop, what constraints they face, and which interventions may be most effective, the project supports more thoughtful and potentially more inclusive approaches to regional economic growth. Given the scale of current public investments in regional innovation, stronger frameworks for policy design and evaluation have the potential to generate meaningful benefits in entrepreneurship, job creation, and long-term regional development.