Developing a Rigorous Methodology to Enhance State-Level Technology Innovation and Workforce Development

Nontechnical description

Intellectual Merit
This project creates a new way for U.S. states to plan how they grow their economies including good-quality, good-wage jobs through research and innovation. It uses proven tools to help leaders from government, business, and education work together to build smart strategies based on real data. Instead of one-size-fits-all plans, each state has the opportunity to create a custom technology and workforce roadmap that fits its unique strengths and needs. The project tests this approach in several states to make sure it works well and can be used by others. This helps build better, more efficient ways to support technology innovation and workforce development across the country, in turn enabling regional leadership, economic growth, and job creation.

Broader Impacts
By helping states plan smarter, this project supports job creation, stronger local economies, and better use of public resources. It ensures every state, including smaller or rural ones, can identify and pursue its strengths, building strong partnerships that in turn accelerate technology and innovation, workforce development, and positioning in the national economic and supply chain. Over time, this will help the U.S. regain its leadership in technology-driven innovation and economic growth and competitiveness.

Technical description

Intellectual Merit
This project advances a replicable, data-informed methodology for strategic planning of U.S. state-level technology innovation and workforce development ecosystems. By integrating established analytical frameworks with publicly available data, the methodology enables states to co-create actionable technology innovation and workforce development roadmaps tailored to their unique assets and priorities. The intellectual contribution lies in shifting strategic planning from static assessments to dynamic, participatory processes that build strategic capacity and foster alignment with national technology innovation and workforce development goals. This pilot phase will validate the approach across two different design workshops, each comprising a set of multiple U.S. states with similar contexts. These meetings will generate transferable insights into technology innovation and workforce development system dynamics and provide the information necessary to enhance the scholarly understanding of ecosystem-level planning and stakeholder engagement within the context of those states.

Broader Impacts
The project directly supports NSF’s mission to strengthen regional participation in the national economy and supply chain by allowing all U.S. states to understand their unique strengths and challenges in research, innovation, and workforce. By equipping states with a scalable planning framework, it empowers them to identify strategic priorities and align public-private partnerships to pursue these priorities. The methodology is designed to be low-burden and adaptable, enabling widespread adoption across all U.S. states. Its dissemination will enhance local and regional economic resilience, thereby ensuring renewed and long-term American competitiveness.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Award Number: 2546645
Principal Investigator: Ryan Hammer
Funds Obligated: $393,066
State: OH