Many communities lack an effective forum for innovators, entrepreneurs and capitalists to work constructively together and learn of new opportunities and ventures. The goal is on job creation which means attracting investment capital for new business formation. One significant impediment to attracting capital is that research assets from individual institutions are not readily made available to the venture community. Moreover, there is a high degree of transaction costs, oftentimes considerable difficulty in obtaining information about the asset, and an environment that makes it hard to do business with the particular research institution.

All of this does not bode well for the investor looking to mitigate risk.A critical component of our approach centers around an Economic Development Framework which brings together the various economic development efforts that exist in a community. The goal is to aggregate and effectively leverage the research investments that are being made by the institutions in a geographic market as a means to attract investment capital. This model provides the basis for economic development agencies, research institutions and venture capital firms to work more effectively together. We have incorporated these concepts into model legislation for public policy makers.