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.