Stories from America’s Industrial Policy Playbook: On the Ground

I vividly remember licking stamps and envelopes on Christmas Eve for the CARES Act relief checks that went out to businesses under the Alameda County CARES Act Program during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had so many small businesses that wrote to us saying how much that $5k check meant to them during that time. For as long as I am working in government, I will never forget what it was like receiving those messages from small businesses expressing their gratitude and saying how much it meant that the government was looking out for them and that the $5k checks were a saving grace during that holiday season.

Scaling Innovation Beyond Tennessee’s Research Hubs

Inspired by NSF Engines, a new statewide model is helping Emerging Research Institutes turn discoveries into startups.

Tennessee’s research engine had been running at two speeds, until a new statewide effort set out to change the system.

On one side: 36 university spinouts from the state’s top-tier research institutions. On the other: just one startup from an emerging research institution (ERI).

ERIs weren’t lacking in potential. Together, they represented a research base of more than $200 million, a powerful source of discovery, particularly for rural and emerging regions. What they needed was the infrastructure to move ideas beyond the lab.

Launch Tennessee, the state’s public–private partnership for innovation, noted the gap as it prepared to administer new federal funding. The State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI 2.0) included $70 million to support early-stage companies in Tennessee, capital that could help promising technologies reach the market.

“You can’t expect different results if you keep doing things the same way,” said Charles Layne, director of the Tennessee Technology Advancement Consortium (TTAC), an initiative Launch Tennessee created in 2022 to focus on closing that gap. “If your job is to support innovators, you have to be willing to innovate yourself.”

The barriers at ERIs to commercialization were widespread and structural. Many ERIs didn’t have a technology transfer office, leaving faculty and postdocs with no guidance on protecting their intellectual property or exploring commercial potential.

A Federal Catalyst and a Neighbor’s Example

While Tennessee was uncovering gaps in its innovation pipeline, Kentucky had already begun building solutions.

With support from the NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines initiative, the University of Kentucky launched the GAME Change Engine, a multi-state effort to strengthen the regional innovation economy in Kentucky and Tennessee.

From that effort, Tennessee leaders connected with Kentucky Commercialization Ventures (KCV), an initiative of the Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation that serves as a centralized tech transfer office for ERIs. By pooling legal, technical, and commercialization resources, KCV gave these campuses access to services they could never afford on their own.

As KCV expanded, its leaders emphasized equity over location.

“Innovation doesn’t recognize geography,” said Kayla Meisner, Executive Director of KCV. “Every researcher, no matter their campus or location, deserves access to the resources, guidance and support they need to succeed.”

The Kentucky model directly informed TTAC’s design in its next phase. In 2023, Launch Tennessee secured pilot funding to expand the model statewide, giving ERIs access to commercialization support, legal expertise, and a shared technology transfer backbone.

Embedding Counselors, Accelerating Change

TTAC adapted the Kentucky model for statewide use, drawing inspiration from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, an ERI that had already embedded a commercialization counselor on campus. The counselor role, first held by Jennifer Skjellum (now with TTAC), led to a sharp rise in invention disclosures, growing from just three annually to more than 20.

Building on that example, TTAC’s first year saw invention disclosures increase across participating institutions by 89% and in its subsequent year administered $125,000 in proof-of-concept funding distributed across 13 emerging technologies. That momentum produced the consortium’s first licenses and supported eight ventures and university spinouts well ahead of schedule.

“We knew there was significant potential, but we also understood that building culture and infrastructure takes time,” said TTAC’s Layne. “We were pleasantly surprised by the initial demand and impact. It shows that the model works.”

Scaling Up and Looking Ahead

TTAC’s early gains unlocked broader resources from Launch Tennessee, which recently received an $8 million reauthorization to expand its work over two years. New programs will include technology maturation grants, a university–industry partnership initiative, and the Tennessee Innovation Exchange, a platform to cultivate research collaboration.

The initial success of the TTAC led to a significant expansion, bringing its total to six partner institutions. In addition to the founding members (Tennessee Tech, Tennessee State University, and the University of Memphis), the consortium now includes Austin Peay State University, East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, and Meharry Medical College.

This growth extends TTAC's impact into communities where first-generation students and non-traditional innovators are driving discovery. It demonstrates that innovation isn't limited to the state's largest research hubs and that potential can be cultivated in every corner of Tennessee.

Around the same time, KCV secured an $8.25 million award from the National Science Foundation to expand its model and support research administration services for emerging research institutions. The program aims to build institutional capacity for academic research funding and create a national model for other communities, like Tennessee, to follow.

Together, TTAC and KCV received a $50,000 joint award and technical assistance from the Georgia-based Partnership for Innovation (PIN) to launch the Multi-Institutional Technology Transfer Network (MITTN), a playbook other states can use to build shared tech transfer systems.

“What TTAC and KCV have built is a model for inclusive innovation,” said Jamal Lewis, Associate Director of Impact at the Partnership for Innovation. “This collaborative approach shows that with the right infrastructure and partnerships, every community—regardless of size or location—can contribute meaningfully to the future of innovation.”

Why It Matters

For ERIs, the stakes are high. While research investments continue to rise, institutions are increasingly focused on driving tangible outcomes for the public good and private good that result from their research enterprise. However, many lack the robust commercialization infrastructure needed to move research from the lab to the market, especially those outside the R1 tier.

In Tennessee, ERIs account for more than $200 million in research activity. This scale of discovery could drive major innovation gains if paired with the right support systems. TTAC and KCV’s shared tech transfer models unlock that potential by reducing duplication, expanding access, and giving researchers the commercialization tools they need. But these models rely on continued public investment to reach their full impact.

TTAC shows how shared infrastructure accelerates outcomes while supporting the faculty, postdocs, and researchers behind the work. And the ripple effect is real. Stronger innovation ecosystems in smaller cities and rural regions lead to more startups, more jobs, and more opportunities where people need them to establish the Multi-Institutional Technology Transfer Network (MITTN), with the focus of developing a framework to help other states replicate the centralized tech transfer model. 

The changing research landscape demands that more institutions — not just R1s — engage in industry and commercialization partnerships. Many ERIs were just beginning to build innovation capacity but face significant barriers to participation. Without continued federal investment, this momentum will stall, and ERIs will lose their emerging role in the national innovation ecosystem.

Pursuit of the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program gave our organization the focus, drive, and convening power supercharge we needed to build a coalition and a strategy that elevates water security as a key national security, competitiveness, and health priority. There are so many stories from this journey, but the overarching narrative is this: we were given the chance to refine a vision for the future of our region that was ambitious, even audacious, and then get to work, methodically bringing it to life in achievable chapters pegged to the milestones of the Engines competition and program. The clear priorities and rigor of the competition, scale and duration of the potential investment horizon, and encouragement to test new institutional models for implementation were key design features of the Engines program that boosted our success in early stages of coalition formation. Now, more than a year into implementation, I can say with confidence that the Engines program in specific and federal public investment in general has been the most transformative catalyst in our private organization’s short history. Even at this early stage, we have the results to prove it.

We need continued national recognition of the value of water and the technologies that help us most effectively utilize it and the resources it carries, from critical minerals to nutrients. We need continued, significant federal investment in the same. As water risks and costs rise globally, so does the value of breakthrough strategies to manage and mitigate them. We can and should be building these solutions in the American heartland, the home of Great Lakes, great rivers, great universities and national laboratories, industrious companies and utilities, and talented people. The challenge is too big for single states or communities to tackle alone or for any one single entity to resource. But the Engines program provides clear proof that the investment of a single entity — our federal government — can drive American innovation and unlock investment at the frontiers of science like no other force.