Development corridors
Turning research strength into industrial strength.
America leads in research but too often commercializes elsewhere. Innovation corridors connect universities, laboratories, technology ecosystems, and workforce networks to the projects that turn discovery into domestic production.
Why innovation corridors
The gap between the lab and the factory.
A breakthrough that is invented in the United States but manufactured abroad strengthens someone else’s industrial base. Closing that gap is a development problem as much as a research one.
The missing piece is rarely the science; it is the pilot line, the scale-up capital, and the trained workforce between a working prototype and a running plant. That is the part we develop along an innovation corridor.
By the numbers
A research superpower, concentrated in a few states.
The U.S. out-invests the OECD average on R&D — but nearly half of business R&D sits in just three states.
Source: NSF NCSES, National Patterns of R&D.
Share of U.S. R&D performed by private business — not government or universities.
NSF NCSES, 2023
U.S. R&D as a share of GDP — above the 2.73% OECD average.
NSF NCSES
U.S. share of all global research and development spending — the largest of any nation.
NSF NCSES / OECD
Capturing the value at home
Invented here, made here.
The full arc of American innovation — from the lab to the industrial base.
- 1DiscoveryAmerican labs lead the world.
- 2CommercializationCaptured at home.
- 3ManufacturingBuilt here.
- 4Industrial baseAmerica’s own base grows.
Common questions
The intellectual property stays where it started.
They partner on projects that commercialize research domestically, and can contribute expertise through the Applied America network. The corridor connects their discovery to the development and workforce that turn it into production.
It takes no stake in the research or in whoever commercializes it, and the intellectual property stays where it started. Where the work becomes a project, Applied America develops it and brings the capital — the site, the partners, the capital stack, the workforce.
Because closing the lab-to-factory gap needs sites, capital, suppliers, and workers — not just better research. Treating it as development, rather than as more science, is what keeps production domestic.
Universities, laboratories, technology ecosystems, workforce institutions, sponsors, and the firms that will manufacture — coordinated so discovery does not stall between the bench and the plant.
The move from prototype to pilot to full production, and the capital and workforce each stage requires. Scale-up is inherently staged, and development follows that sequence.
Research funded and proven at home continues to be manufactured elsewhere, exporting the industrial benefit of domestic discovery. Innovation corridors exist to keep that value from leaking away.
Connecting research to production?
Bring us an innovation corridor or commercialization opportunity to develop.