Innovation: It Ain't Always About the Money

This week the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) released 5 recommendations for actions R.I. can take to strengthen its innovation capacity. Three members of BIF’s leadership team—Board of Directors members Don Stanford and Andy van Dam and BIF founder and Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan—were among those who presented the recommendations to Rhode Island’s Governor and General Assembly.

The recommendations, which focused on increasing Rhode Island’s ability to conduct and commercialize research, support entrepreneurs, and promote public/private partnership, zeroed in on Rhode Island’s unique ability for Innovation @ Scale. Also included in the recommendations was support for BIF’s Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs) project, a public/private effort to make Rhode Island the first state in the country with border-to-border broadband wireless. [Download the STAC report]

Here’s the clincher: the recommendations weren’t about simply throwing more money at the problems Rhode Island faces. Sure, elements of the state’s innovation infrastructure are significantly under funded and often you need to spend money to reap the return on your investments. But the message behind the STAC recommendations was pretty clear: collaboration is the key to making the most out of what we’ve got.

By suggesting that the state use its modest resources to support programs that leverage Rhode Island’s existing innovation assets—like its ability to promote innovation @ scale, facilitate collaboration and use its size as a competitive advantage—the STAC recommendations remind us that innovation often results from new ways of thinking, not just a new ways of spending, reinforcing the notion that sometimes the greatest gains come from connecting existing resources in ways we never may have expected.

Even better, the recommendations were warmly welcomed by the state’s leadership, suggesting that not only is Rhode Island ready to step up to the plate and become and national innovation player, but that the philosophy underlying the STAC recommendations deeply resonated with those in charge of the state’s budget.

Now that’s food for thought.