Innovation Compass

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 relative to their share of the U.S. population.

The lower participation in federal seed funding programs among certain groups—including rural communities, people from Indigenous communities, people of color, women, and people with disabilities—can be attributed to a variety of factors, and most centrally to a lack of capital, whether financial, educational, social, or other.

Over 20 months, the Compass Pilot identified and developed a set of rigorously researched, co-designed, and piloted tools that can now be adapted by a variety of players in the innovation ecosystem to have impact in supporting undercapitalized innovators at scale. The primary tool is a publicly available web platform, Innovation Compass.

Research Participants

U.S. States & Territories

Months of Direct Participant Engagement

What We Found

During our research, we engaged undercapitalized innovators, experts who support them, and federal staff with seed funding expertise to better understand the challenges 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 and collaborated with:

innovators who have successfully launched ventures that secured federal seed funding;
innovators with earlier-stage ventures and those who have never received federal seed funding;
innovator support professionals whose organizations work to build capacity and viability of new ventures; and
federal staff with expertise in federal seed funding programs and initiatives.

Research and Co-Design

PPL spoke and collaborated with innovators from 22 U.S. States and Territories in varying phases of the early innovator journey and with varying levels of connection to the larger innovation ecosystem.

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.

Among other things, we learned that undercapitalized innovators, in particular, need:

User-friendly applications that remove the guesswork and technical know-how of applying to federal funding opportunities;
Clear, plain-language information and resources;
Insight into their gaps and achievable strategies for addressing them;
Recognition of the obstacles they might face (including basics like personal finances and geographic isolation);
Models of success they can relate to;
Connections to value-aligned mentors and support organizations;
Validation that they belong to the innovation community; and
Enough cushion to be able to experiment, try, fail, and grow (because the stakes of every choice can feel very high when you’re resource-strapped).

Opportunity Areas

In collaboration with our partners at the NSF, we shifted focus to opportunities preceding application for federal seed funding.

Redefining Scope

While we were initially inclined to focus on redesigning the application process, our NSF partners noted that there was already work being done in this area. Instead, we identified that the unique value of our contribution could be further upstream: focusing on what might enable early-stage innovators to advance science and technology ventures toward eventual fundability and successful launch.

Within this refined scope, we generated dozens of big and small ideas to meet the identified challenges. Then, on the basis of our preliminary ideas, we worked with our partners and advisory committee to define three opportunity areas for intervention at different stages of an innovator’s journey, all of them preceding actual application to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) federal seed funding grants.

Our NSF partners were most interested in a subset of Opportunity Areas 1 and 2: helping innovators identify the types of capital they need to thrive and supporting them to close any related gaps. Focusing on capital building felt more impactful than application improvements for any given federal funding program. This more holistic priority, along with PPL’s intention to center the first-hand experiences and needs of undercapitalized innovators, guided the solutions we ultimately co-designed.

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

We recruited a group of 15 innovators from across the country to help us refine and iterate our initial ideas. We spent five months working together to develop 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 central innovation framework within which all the other ideas could rest.

Together, leveraging needs expressed during research and design concepts developed in co-design, we developed a web platform, Innovation Compass.

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.

Innovation Compass is a learning hub designed to equip early-stage innovators with the foundational resources they need to thrive, particularly in environments where support infrastructure may be scarce or inaccessible. The platform offers a standardized framework composed of six key features:

Building Blocks: 12 foundational focus areas that capture what innovators need to be successful in the innovation ecosystem
Practices: 40 practices categorized by building blocks that innovators can pursue to advance their business

Resources: Vetted materials that have been proven effective for innovators and innovator support professionals
Compass Quiz: A structured and user-friendly self-assessment that helps early-stage innovators identify their gaps and prioritize focus on particular building blocks and practices
Innovator Stories: A collection of real innovator profiles offering valuable insights into the challenges and inspirations experienced when trying to grow a venture
Glossary: Definitions of technical jargon in plain and culturally relevant language to ensure clarity and understanding for all users

The combination of these features aims to enable innovators not only to develop their ideas but also to build confidence throughout the process. Our engagement with innovators and support organizations suggested that this combination of confidence-building and capacity-building is especially key among undercapitalized innovators.

For example, innovators in rural communities might not have easy access to mainstream innovation hubs, academic institutions, or professional networks. By introducing the Building Blocks framework and related Practices, the platform helps innovators recognize specific actions they can take and resources they can utilize to advance their innovation ideas.

The approach promotes holistic thinking, allowing innovators to assess where they are in their journey, where they need to go, and how to chart a course toward success.

This is the real thing. As an entrepreneur, you need a road map. You don't always want or have time to reinvent the wheel. Pulling on templates and tools for reference has been life changing.”

—Innovator

Our Pilot Methodology

Over three months in late 2024 and early 2025, we piloted a minimum viable product (MVP) of the Innovation Compass platform with 25 early-stage and undercapitalized innovators. From 176 applications, we selected this cohort based on a range of criteria including their focus on science and technology for social impact, their geographic spread, with priority for rural participants, their levels of connectivity to innovation networks and resources, and their stage of the innovation journey. Each participant received a $20,000 micro-grant to support their learning development in tandem with their use of the platform.

We also engaged a handful of mentors and a group of innovator support organizations (ISOs) to test and provide feedback on their potential use of the platform and its components.

Across these different users, we identified 54 distinct learning questions we hoped to answer through the pilot and developed nine qualitative and quantitative approaches to capturing data to provide those answers.

Pilot Outcomes

By the end of the pilot, every innovator in the pilot cohort showed a notable increase in their results on the Compass Quiz, indicating greater preparedness to successfully launch a venture by the end of the pilot.

The visualization above illustrates innovators’ growth in each of the 12 Building Blocks between the start and end points. We grouped this data in multiple ways, but in each grouping, every segment of the cohort demonstrated growth across all Building Blocks and also across almost all Practices. On the scale in the visualization, a self-reported 0% reflects a total lack of preparation on any of the Practices related to a Building Block, while 100% reflects complete preparation for all Practices related to that Building Block.

This visualization also supports pilot findings that innovators at the beginning of the innovation journey (Initial Concept) tend to overestimate their preparedness to succeed based on a shallower sense of what they don’t know.

Based on our final evaluation survey, pilot participants most valued:

the Building Blocks framework and how it enabled coherent organization of resources on the platform;
Resources that provided step-by-step instructions or video/audio-based content on how to complete a task;
Funding and financial resources, including grant databases, financial planning tools, and startup finance guides; and
Resources offering clarity and guidance around legal and organizational structure.

I’ve never seen anything with the kind of self-reflection you get from the quiz, and the helpfulness of the rankings for things that you need to work on. That’s something totally new to me and probably the most helpful."

—Innovator

Redesign

Based on pilot feedback from innovators, mentors, and innovator support organizations, we conducted a final phase of redesign to address obstacles and improve value. We also identified a set of future upgrades that, though out of scope for the current project, could improve Innovation Compass. We are open to new partnerships that might enable us to develop these and other new features:

Systems enabling effective platform administration and performance: a more robust content management system; dashboards for site analytics and cohort management; search engine optimization
User accounts enabling a richer user experience: trackable quiz results and progress checklists; individualized journey by stage or geography; reminders of next steps
Clearer introduction and guidance on how to use and navigate the site: for new visitors, a site tour; for returning visitors a customized list of recommended next steps; pathways; a chatbot
Infrastructure to facilitate relationship-building: reconceptualizing Innovator Stories; adding bulletin boards; commenting features; listings or other tools to enable connections to mentors or facilitators; links to local resources

Project Implementation

Innovation Compass, along with its code and components, is publicly available under a Creative Commons license, allowing organizations to adapt and build on the platform. You can access the tool here.

Focusing our intervention upstream of the application process for federal seed funding enabled us to target a richer root cause of underrepresentation among undercapitalized innovators in that grantmaking pool. But it also meant that the intervention couldn’t easily be integrated by the NSF or other federal agencies.

Aside from our federal partners, we worked with Innovator Support Organizations (ISOs) to explore the potential for them to iterate and scale Innovation Compass. Key ISOs ran their own internal pilots using the components of Innovation Compass and found exciting value in integrating it. We learned from them what they needed to be able to make use of the site’s components in their own platforms and tools, and then worked with them to deliver on those needs. Current implementation partners include Cambio Labs, the Center on Rural Innovation, and the HBCU Founders Initiative.

Projects

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Innovation Compass

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Project Background

What We Found

What We Designed

Project Implementation

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Projects

Innovation Compass

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Innovation Compass

Partners & Funders

The Project

The Outcome

Project Background

What We Found

What We Designed

Project Implementation

Menu

Get in Touch

Interested in partnering with us?

Join Us

We're currently seeking applications for a Graduate Summer Intern. If interested, learn more about the role here. To hear about future job announcements, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and LinkedIn or subscribe to our newsletter.

Follow Along

Social Media

Donate

We're currently seeking applications for a Graduate Summer Intern. If interested, learn more about the role here.

To hear about future job announcements, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and LinkedIn or subscribe to our newsletter.