The Compass Pilot: Increasing Participation in Federal Seed-Funding Programs

Project Background

Innovation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) plays a critical role in addressing societal challenges, such as healthcare disparities, environmental risks, and economic inequalities — yet members of the communities most affected by these societal challenges tend to participate less in federal seed-funding programs than is relative to their share of the U.S. population.

The underrepresentation of certain groups (including people from indigenous communities, people of color, women, and people with disabilities, among others) in STEMM funding programs can be attributed to a variety of factors, including generational wealth gaps, obstacles to higher education, and segregated social networks. Structural biases within funding programs’ outreach, application, and review processes may also present a significant barrier to access.

While this is not an exhaustive list of all the roadblocks facing diverse teams attempting to bring their innovations to market, these observations provide the impetus for the proposed work.

Over 20 months, the Compass Pilot is identifying and developing a set of rigorously researched, co-designed, and piloted tools that will be ready to be operationalized at scale.

What We Found

During research, we engaged innovators, experts who support innovators, and federal staff with expertise in seed funding to better understand the challenges that underrepresented innovators face when developing their business ideas.

As in all Public Policy Lab projects, we took a human-centered design approach, conducting qualitative research with participants to learn more about their experiences and ultimately generate fuel for the design process.

Participant Sample
We spoke with participants across 23 states, including:

Innovators who have never received federal seed funding, have generated $200K or less in revenue, and have a team of five employees or less. We spoke with innovators from varied backgrounds, including people who identified as Black, Native American, Latino/a, Asian, and White and located in priority areas.
Subject-matter experts with expertise in areas where innovators need support, such as technological innovation, commercial viability, and social impact. We also spoke with innovators who have received federal seed funding.
Ambassadors who work at organizations supporting early-stage innovators in priority areas.
Federal staff across three federal agencies with expertise in federal seed funding programs and initiatives.

Advisory Committee
To deepen the value and utility of this project, PPL assembled a diverse advisory committee to bring their expertise and perspective to this work. We interviewed a pool of subject-matter experts and ambassadors who provided insight into their organizations and innovation ecosystem. From this pool, we identified a set of organizations that touch on vital aspects of the innovator journey.

What We Heard
During research, participants shared their experiences across the journey stages of seed-funding: from getting started with an idea, to learning about funding, to applying for funding. The following takeaways are samplings of what we heard from our pool of participants. We collect these takeaways to generate fuel for the design process. They are not intended to represent objective truths nor are they statistically representative.

When getting started, the cultural norms and external circumstances of innovators’ environments play a large role in the way they perceive and pursue innovation. Unsurprisingly, limited access to education and wealth can quell would-be innovators before they start.
When learning about funding, many innovators struggle with finding opportunities. In communities with many existing innovators, it can be easier for information to travel and for people to be referred to opportunities but these pathways are less paved in communities that are underrepresented in innovation. Innovators also struggle with assessing the opportunity–many innovators self-disqualify because they believe they don’t meet the requirements.
When applying for funding, it can be difficult for innovators to navigate the applications. Upon first glance, it may appear that applications require more time and resources than innovators can spare.

What do innovators need?

After synthesizing our research data, we identified six key needs of innovators.

Guidance

Innovators need guidance on how to filter through the sea of funding opportunities to make informed decisions on what to pursue.

Easy Applications

Innovators need user-friendly applications that remove the guesswork and technical know-how of applying to federal funding opportunities.

Resilience

Innovators need a resilient mindset to cultivate confidence for themselves and their innovation.

Trusted Mentors

Innovators need trusted mentors or advisors who can point them in the right direction and help them focus on what matters.

Essential Resources

Innovators need access to essential resources to participate fully in the innovation ecosystem including food, water, shelter, and security.

Co-Designing Solutions

Based on the identified needs, we ideated across the spectrum and generated dozens of ideas—big and small. We worked with our partners and advisory committee to prioritize the design concepts and identify a set of opportunity areas, or where we thought these design concepts made unique interventions at different stages of an innovator’s journey.

We spent five months working with our innovator cohort to refine our preliminary design concepts into working prototypes. This human-centered design process gave innovators real authority over the project’s outputs. Over ten co-design workshops, innovators mapped out their personal innovation journeys, provided critical feedback on prototypes and design directions, and helped us refine a framework that is now the backbone of our pilot tool.

Co-Design Sessions

During ten workshops, we collaborated with innovators to narrow in on design concepts. These concepts centered around tools to orient innovators to the innovation ecosystem, to assess the assets that innovators have and lack, and to consolidate essential resources.

What We Designed

Based on the needs expressed during research, and the design concepts devised during co-design, we built the Innovation Compass Website.

The Innovation Compass Website aims to empower early-stage, underrepresented innovators to move their innovation forward by providing access to curated information and resources essential for navigating the innovation ecosystem.

Key Features:

Innovation Building Blocks Twelve foundational focus areas that capture what innovators need to be successful in the innovation ecosystem.
Innovation Activities Forty activity ‘steps’, categorized by building block, that innovators can pursue to advance their business.
Key Resources Vetted materials that have been proven effective for innovators and ISO professionals.
Innovation Compass Quiz A structured and user-friendly quiz that helps early founders identify the right resources based on the innovation activities.
Innovator Stories A collection of profiles offering valuable insights into the challenges and inspirations experienced by innovators as they grow their business.
Glossary A section that defines technical jargon in plain and culturally relevant language to ensure clarity and understanding for all users.

Innovation Compass Website

The website aims to empower early-stage, underrepresented innovators to move their innovation forward by providing access to curated information and resources essential for navigating the innovation ecosystem.

Project Implementation

Beginning in early 2025, we will pilot our website with a new cohort of 25 innovators and other pilot partners. During the pilot, we’ll test our prototype in real-world settings, collect feedback and evaluation data, iterate on the prototype, and ultimately implement it at scale.

For Further Information

If you’re interested in receiving periodic updates about this project’s progress, sign up for our newsletter here. In the coming months, we will be providing additional opportunities to get involved.

To learn more about the Compass Pilot, please see the National Science Foundation’s project announcement. For additional inquiries, please contact our project team at compass@publicpolicylab.org.

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Award Number 2331195.

Projects

The Compass Pilot: Increasing Participation in Federal Seed-Funding Programs

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

The Compass Pilot: Increasing Participation in Federal Seed-Funding Programs

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Project Background

What We Found