The purpose of this Community Innovation Design program is to model a process designed to enable communities to prioritize their voice and needs and co-design innovation innovation opportunities.

Through this process, in each community we're asking:

• Who are we?
• What can we do to today with what we have?
• How can we activate our underestimated/underused assets to elevate community wealth?
• How can we use what we learn to accelerate innovation?
• How can we own what we have and will create?

Please visit our Research page for more information on the contributing research.

Throughout the program, community members and leaders are taking a renewed look at the assets and opportunities already existing in each community that could be engaged to encourage or accelerate innovation.

What we're counting as capital:

• Individual: The existing stock of skills, understanding, physical health and mental wellness in a community’s people.

• Intellectual: The existing stock of knowledge, resourcefulness, creativity and innovation in a community’s people, institutions, organizations and sectors.
  • Includes:
    • Innovation drivers are the research and medical institutions, the large firms, start-ups and entrepreneurs focused on developing cutting-edge technologies, products and services for the market.
    • Innovation cultivators are the companies, organizations or groups that support the growth of individuals, firms and their ideas.

• Social: The existing stock of trust, relationships and networks in a community’s population.
  • Includes:
    • Physical assets in the private realm are privately-owned buildings and spaces that stimulate innovation in new and creative ways.

• Cultural: The existing stock of traditions, customs, ways of doing, and world views in a region’s population.

• Natural: The existing stock of natural resources—for example, water, land, air, plants and animals—in a region’s places.
  • Includes:
    • Physical assets in the public realm are the spaces accessible to the public, such as parks, plazas and streets that become locales of energy and activity

• Built: The existing stock of constructed infrastructure—for example, buildings, sewer systems, broadband, roads—in a region’s places.

• Political: The existing stock of goodwill, influence and power that people, organizations and institutions in the region can exercise in decision-making.

• Financial: The existing stock of monetary resources available in the region for investment in the region.

• Economic: The existing stock of a community’s economic activity contributors, including home-based businesses, micro-enterprises, small businesses and companies that participate, cultivate or support an innovation-rich environment.
  • Includes:
    • Neighborhood-building amenities provide important support services to residents and workers in the district

• Spiritual: The existing stock of a community’s spiritual resources including churches, houses of worship, and religious or faith based groups.