Labs and Beyond: Opportunities to Transform Innovation Support

This report challenges what may seem to be an obvious assumption … that investing in innovation requires finding ways to directly support innovators in their work.

While innovation labs and related challenge grant programs are certainly the dominant model of innovation investment today, these innovator centric strategies are burdened by fundamental limitations. They are often difficult to sustain at scale and traditionally deliver bounded product and service innovations, similar to business startups in the commercial sector.