Every National Science Foundation (NSF) Regional Innovation Engine is already thinking about what happens when the federal funding runs out. Most default to the same question: how do we keep the organization going, or find new money to replace the old? But that framing treats an NSF Engine as a single, indivisible thing, when in practice it's a bundle of distinct capabilities—convening, research, industry engagement, integration, funding—that don't have to live in the same place forever. The alternative is to ask which of those capabilities need to endure and to plan for where each one lives once the grant runs out.
Sustaining an engine's impact means sustaining capabilities, not necessarily the organization itself. This piece introduces five distinct capabilities that make ecosystem building work, offering a lens for figuring out which ones matter most in a given region, and which need to stay housed together to work at all.
Conversations about the future of NSF Engines and similarly-funded ecosystem-building initiatives often default to organizational questions: how do we keep the activities going after the initial grant ends, or how do we replace time-limited federal funding with new resources? In some regions, that's the right question–an NSF Engine could and should exist indefinitely in something close to its current form, playing a similar role in the ecosystem. But in many regions, funding constraints will make that impossible. And even where it's possible, it may not be the healthiest long-term arrangement: innovation ecosystems tend to function best when they don't revolve around a single orchestrator or funder, though they also don't function well as a decentralized group of small organizations tied together only by voluntary, intermittent collaboration.
If NSF Engines are unlikely to exist in their current form indefinitely in many regions, that isn't a failure of the program or the model; in fact, it may be closer to the opposite. An engine that's needed forever, in exactly its original form, is arguably a sign that it hasn't succeeded in shifting the knowledge, incentives, or capabilities of other organizations in the ecosystem. There's a reason so few entities look like NSF Engines as they exist today: substantial funding and the backing of the NSF let them simultaneously play the role of convener, strategist, implementer, and funder. Outside the NSF Engines program, however, those roles rarely sit inside a single organization. This is both because it's hard for any one organization to acquire the resources to do it all, but also because there are real tensions between the roles. What makes an organization a good strategic funder tends to make it a less trusted convener.
Sustainability conversations shouldn't start from the assumption that an engine is one indivisible organization. At the outset, there's a logic for an engine to play many roles at once in order to ensure the initiative is built around a coherent theory of change. But over time, engines can be unbundled, their component parts distributed across the ecosystem in a variety of arrangements. Our goal here is to give NSF Engines and similar intermediary organizations a useful way to think about those component parts in a way that informs the sustainability strategy.
What should guide NSF Engines' thinking about sustainability is a simple idea: engines were never designed primarily to implement programs or fund researchers and entrepreneurs. Their distinct value is the ability and leeway to treat ecosystem building as a core goal, not a byproduct or enabler of programmatic work. That means identifying and addressing a missing form of connective capacity in a region—the capacity that determines whether innovation, once generated, actually takes root and delivers lasting economic benefit locally. Most organizations are built to deliver supply-side inputs: research, training, startup support, discrete programs. NSF Engines, by contrast, work to shape how systems function together, how innovation, workforce development, industry needs, and public investment interact, reinforce one another, and move in a shared direction.
What needs to be sustained, then, is the combination of capabilities that let this connective tissue endure as funding sources, political leadership, and market conditions change.
The goal is to make sure the coordination, demand-shaping, and system-level problem-solving that underpins a region's innovation capacity doesn't disappear when federal funding ends.
There are five distinct capabilities that enable this kind of sustained ecosystem building. They're largely invisible; they aren't areas of programmatic intervention like startup funding or workforce development. As engines settle into their long-term role—what we've called a "strategic integrator" in other pieces, and what others have named a "systems integrator"—the key questions become which of these capabilities matter most in a given region, and which need to sit inside the same organization to capture the complementarities between them.
: There is powerful evidence that exposure to innovation largely dictates not only whether children grow up to become innovators, but in which technology areas. A region's innovative potential is determined to a significant degree by its ability to meaningfully connect as many people as possible to innovative industries and, as we've described previously, innovation often occurs when old industries meet new ideas from new domains. So it's essential that regions have an entity dedicated to connecting actors that rarely interact otherwise, whether they're divided by socioeconomic status, industry, academic field, or otherwise. This is very different from an industry association, a chamber of commerce, or an organization that hosts events to connect aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs. It's very different from a backbone organization that orchestrates the work of a group of nonprofits, or from the governance of a formal coalition. This capability means strategically — but often informally — creating purposeful collisions between distant actors in the ecosystem, and doing the translation work that makes meaningful conversation possible.Orienting: Previous entries in this series focused on the degree to which organizations that need to be part of an engine's efforts lack a shared theory and a shared fact base for making sense of the economy and deciding collectively which parts of it are most likely to deliver sustained, broadly shared growth. Most regions also lack in-house research capabilities that would let these organizations agree not just on what parts of the economy matter, but where the bottlenecks and market failures are that demand attention. Emerging industries are essentially invisible, or at least inscrutable, to large parts of the economic and workforce development system. Regions need a permanent capability that provides trustworthy, non-technical research outlining the potential of key industries, highlighting areas of underperformance, and pointing to root causes that can be addressed.Activating: As we explored earlier in this series, innovation ecosystems, especially in workforce development, depend on real involvement from businesses — a shift away from advisory councils that offer polite endorsement, toward authentic private-sector ownership of the agenda and follow-through in implementation. That means starting with businesses' real problems and co-creating solutions that meet their needs on their timelines, while providing the facilitation, infrastructure, and support that lets even committed firms translate good intentions into sustained, strategic involvement. This capability requires understanding that businesses won't lead complex regional strategies on their own, but will step up as informed strategic partners when given meaningful roles in shaping agendas and held accountable for playing their part. Organizations that activate business leadership this way need "embedded autonomy" — close enough to industry to have credibility, without being captured by any one industry or interest group.Integrating: A key goal of NSF Engines is not just to generate innovation but to capture it, creating conditions that are "sticky," so ideas don't leave the region once they leave the lab, so startups don't leave once they need pilot projects with first customers, and so firms don't leave once they're ready to expand manufacturing capacity. That requires an organization focused on orchestrating integrated solutions: making sure demand is stimulated to match a growing supply of startups (for instance, ensuring public-sector entities are prepared to serve as pilot and demonstration partners, and building the services and policies that enable that interaction), or ensuring workforce supply is attuned to demand by building the full continuum of supports that connect people to training and then to jobs, rather than just offering training. Part of the work of an integrator is identifying gaps and duplication in these solutions and pushing the right organizations to play the right roles.Mobilizing resources: building an innovation ecosystem requires capital, but not only the venture or growth financing that individual firms need. They also require durable funding for ecosystem-building capacity, for workforce and student pathways, and for “demand-pull” tools that help local institutions adopt and de-risk new solutions. The challenge is that the kinds of investments that make a regional strategy work need to be coordinated and sustained long enough to compound, yet most funders and investors – besides the NSF – are not structured to underwrite a decade-long, strategy-led effort. Ecosystems therefore need a capable intermediary that continuously assesses the capital stack the strategy actually requires, builds relationships across a diversified set of local and national funders (so the region is not hostage to any single source), and designs fit-for-purpose financial mechanisms (not just grantmaking processes) to deploy capital in ways that reinforce the strategy. Whether or not it directly raises and allocates funds, its core function is strategic: ensuring the region’s funding model evolves as quickly, and in the same direction, as the strategy itself.As NSF Engines consider how to position themselves for the long run, and talk with funders and partners about how to sustain the most important elements of their work, they should assess their work according to these capabilities—which are most important, which need to be done by the same organization—rather than by the more obvious programmatic areas of work they might keep or spin off. There will always be funding for programmatic interventions in innovation ecosystems, whether from other federal entities, state governments, or philanthropies. What's most at stake now for engines is whether they can take advantage of this rare moment of support for ecosystem building and find a way to sustain the capabilities that matter most.
The work of building innovation ecosystems is ongoing and adaptive, not something that can be accomplished through a one-time plan or a single grant. It depends on relationships and trust across sectors, credibility with industry, and the ability to influence how resources are deployed over time. And because it sits between systems rather than within any one of them, it rarely fits neatly inside a single agency, organization, or funding stream. NSF Engines operate in these in-between spaces, holding together systems that were never designed to function as systems at all.
In a few regions across the country, organizations are beginning to approximate this role. Tulsa Innovation Labs, for example, operates as a strategy-and-execution platform for building new industries, not simply as an implementer of projects. CEOS of Indiana Corporate Partnership plays many of these roles. BioSTL in St. Louis has, for several decades, not only delivered services and capital but also served as a real ecosystem builder in the region. These organizations offer models that NSF Engines can adapt and build upon, but it's also worth recognizing that they're few and far between — their ability to hold all of these capabilities within one organization depends, in many cases, on having a funder that provides not just the resources to do so but the flexibility to operate as an integrator (which requires a strong point of view about the right way to do things) as well as a convener (which requires being trusted as a neutral platform). In short, there aren't many examples of organizations that look like mature engines.
In some places, NSF Engines may ultimately become just that—the long-term home for the capabilities described in this piece, all of which engines take responsibility for at the outset of their work. In others, their most lasting contribution may be helping existing institutions evolve, or enabling multiple institutions to act in more coordinated ways. Either way, the central test of success is whether the region can sustain the capacity to ensure that innovation, once generated, actually takes root and delivers lasting economic benefits locally.
Reflection Questions
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