Location
Havener Center, Miner Lounge / Wiese Atrium, 1:30pm-3:30pm
Start Date
4-2-2026 1:30 PM
End Date
4-2-2026 3:30 PM
Presentation Date
April 2, 2026; 1:30pm-3:30pm
Description
Many places around the world are developing regional innovation ecosystems to spur regional economic. Many innovation ecosystems fail or barely maintain their initial momentum after a few years. In this paper, we identified challenges and best practices facing innovation ecosystems interviews with the innovation ecosystem stakeholders. We employed the MIT REAP (Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program) model to categorize the five main stakeholders of the innovation ecosystem: entrepreneurs, universities, industry, risk capital, and government. Our initial results indicated the following: (a) Access to capital and talented workforce; (b) Stakeholder discovery process is one of the critical areas to understand the basic value proposition of each stakeholder; (c) and the scalability of innovation ecosystem in terms of scaling of resources, people, and products/services. We believe that the results of this study will be helpful for entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) to build and enhance the vibrancy of an ecosystem.
Biography
Mahnaz Asgari Sooran is a PhD student in Engineering Management at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on innovation ecosystems, product development, and redesign of an existing product. She has over eight years of industry experience in the automotive sector, which informs her research perspective on real-world applications of engineering management. Her current work explores challenges and best practices in regional innovation ecosystems, aiming to improve collaboration between stakeholders and enhance innovation performance.
Meeting Name
2026 - Miners Solving for Tomorrow Research Conference
Department(s)
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Document Type
Poster
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
event
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2026 The Authors, All rights reserved
Challenges and Best Practices of Regional Innovation ecosystems
Havener Center, Miner Lounge / Wiese Atrium, 1:30pm-3:30pm
Many places around the world are developing regional innovation ecosystems to spur regional economic. Many innovation ecosystems fail or barely maintain their initial momentum after a few years. In this paper, we identified challenges and best practices facing innovation ecosystems interviews with the innovation ecosystem stakeholders. We employed the MIT REAP (Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program) model to categorize the five main stakeholders of the innovation ecosystem: entrepreneurs, universities, industry, risk capital, and government. Our initial results indicated the following: (a) Access to capital and talented workforce; (b) Stakeholder discovery process is one of the critical areas to understand the basic value proposition of each stakeholder; (c) and the scalability of innovation ecosystem in terms of scaling of resources, people, and products/services. We believe that the results of this study will be helpful for entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) to build and enhance the vibrancy of an ecosystem.
Comments
Advisor: Venket Allada, allada@mst.edu