The National Science Foundation supports a wide variety of valuable technical and social civic innovation through its CIVIC Innovation Challenge and Smart and Connected Communities. While many of these
projects have significant and long-lasting impact in multiple smart and connected communities, others fail to make the translation into sustainable and scalable community best practices. This EAGER will employ a multi-stage process to identify the combinations of factors which underlie successful translation as well as those factors which can be barriers. This EAGER will also explore specific steps, interventions, and resources which can propel more projects to sustainable, scalable, and long-term success. An important part of this research is connecting individual projects with what may be appropriate ideas, approaches,
and resources, and documenting the outcomes. We may discover that some issues we identify really aren’t that important, aren’t attractive to the project teams, or don’t have the intended impact. However,
US Ignite is starting with a strong track record of coaching successful technological and social adoption of smart and connected community practices across more than fifty communities over the past decade.
During the EAGER process, US Ignite will also work closely with the existing Smart and Connected Communities Virtual Organization, the CIVIC Innovation Challenge team, and the NSF S&CC team. The
results of this EAGER will be documented publicly and made available to the wider set of academic partners, community partners, industry partners (including startups), government partners, and the press.
US Ignite will work with the NSF and its Smart and Connected Community and CIVIC Innovation Challenge research projects to pilot pathways to deploy these technology and policy projects into larger-
scale and multi-city sustainable deployments. US Ignite will analyze existing NSF-funded research projects in S&CC and CIVIC to determine suitability for sustainable and successful deployment in multiple communities. Deployment may be accomplished through a number of pathways such as spinning out the technology to a startup (with or without the original investigators), making the technology and/or
data available as open source for others to use, protecting the intellectual property so that it’s valuable to a committed industry partner or industry alliance, through implementation by governments or nonprofits, or other pathways. Some of the pathways will leverage partners already providing these services (e.g., I-CORPS, university tech transfer organizations, and One Million Cups). Ability to positively impact
equity, inclusiveness of diverse populations, community engagement, and civic trust will be important components.