Capital for Innovation

Core Activities

The program pursues its mission through four primary sets of activities:

1. Pursuing policy and regulatory fixes that improve alignment among stakeholder groups and create the foundation for increased support for innovation.

2. Producing tools that provide transparency, access points, and efficient market-making infrastructure to empower investors to fund innovation.

3. Developing new transaction structures that create stronger linkages between providers of capital and beneficiaries of innovation to help shepherd early-stage solutions to mainstream adoption.

4. Designing new financial instruments that optimize the allocation of risk across innovation ecosystems.

Current Work

Building Capacity for Community Lending Models 

In lower- and middle-income communities, there is limited access to funding for small businesses and for the financial institutions designed to provide that capital. Working with the Center for Financial Market’s Access to Capital program and the Center for Regional Economics, C4I is researching the constraints of local financial institutions, like Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority-owned Depository Institutions, and designing strategies to provide them growth capital and increase financing in underserved communities.

Financing More Cures

On average, only one of any 10,000 scientific discoveries will emerge from academic labs and enter the clinic. Working with FasterCures, C4I is developing new medical research investment strategies, data-sharing and market-making mechanisms, and financial instruments that better allocate risk across the drug discovery ecosystem to attract more funding for cures with societal benefit.

Investing in Sustainable Development

The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a universal framework for capital providers to consider the social impact of their investments. Unfortunately, with many goals centered in nascent and developing markets, deal flow is limited, and risks are not compatible with traditional market appetite. To address these challenges, C4I is creating standards for public-private risk-sharing instruments and strategies to commercialize high-potential nonprofit assets with the goal of unlocking more capital for global impact.

Resilient Infrastructure Financing Initiative (RIFI)

To promote post-COVID long-term economic recovery and job creation, we must accelerate public sector financial innovation and innovative impact partnerships to close a multi-trillion-dollar U.S. infrastructure funding gap in the years to come. The Resilient Infrastructure Financing Initiative advances community infrastructure innovation through policy ideas, regional training events for investors and public sector officials, reports, public testimony, and Financial Innovation Labs (FILs).