PROVIDENCE – The small, crowded foyer at EpiVax, the jewel of a life sciences firm located in the heart of the former Jewelry District, served as the scenic picture postcard backdrop as Gov. Gina Raimondo and CommerceRI Secretary Stefan Pryor officially launched three new innovation initiatives on Nov. 18, promising that these efforts would help to “spark” the state’s innovation economy.

[The decision by CommerceRI folks to choose EpiVax as a scenic backdrop was apparently made at the last-minute, because, for whatever reason, EpiVax was not mentioned in the official news release.]

EpiVax, as readers of ConvergenceRI know, has been in the forefront of developing new technologies in the field of immuno-informatics and vaccine and biologics design, under the leadership of Dr. Annie De Groot and her team. It is one of the pioneering biotech firms in Rhode Island’s emerging innovation ecosystem, with a history dating back more than two decades.

At the news conference, the firm’s co-founder, Bill Martin, announced that EpiVax was soon going to be moving its design of a H7N9 flu vaccine based upon recombinant technologies into clinical trials in the next few months, a major development with global implications. That was big news, much bigger perhaps that the launch of the three new initiatives, in regard to how it may translate into the growth of biomedical innovation industry sector in Rhode Island. [See links to recent stories below about EpiVax.]

Tradecraft is everything for the Raimondo administration’s public relations event management. Beyond the scenic postcard backdrop at EpiVax, the launch was accompanied by a series of glossy  postcard-sized collateral materials, hailing the “The Rhode Island Innovation Initiative.” The CommerceRI effort was described as “a suite of financing incentives for the new generation of innovation at your small business.”

Maybe. The programs, whose applications are now online, actually feature somewhat modest investments, despite the hyped messaging:

• Up to 10, $50,000 “innovation vouchers” for companies with under 500 employees [most companies in Rhode Island] to contract for research to be conducted by Rhode Island universities or medical centers to support project-specific R&D.

• Co-investments by CommerceRI, beginning at $50,000, to spur small business development around technical assistance, office and lab space on flexible terms, and access to capital. With a total of $500,000, that translates to a maximum of 10 such co-investments to be spread across a rather broad swath of targeted sectors: health care, life sciences, food, agriculture, clean technology, energy efficiency and cyber security.

• The largest amount of money is targeted at cluster development, some $1.5 million over the next two years, with grants up to $250,000 for organizational development and up to $500,000 this fiscal year to support “well-defined” program development.

All of which are positive developments. But, the messaging on the materials that accompanied the made-for-the-news-media event seemed to capture a truer import. More than packaging and selling the three new programs approved as part of the FY 2016 budget by the R.I. General Assembly, the thrust of the collateral was centered on positioning and selling the state’s economic development agency as heroic in its actions.

Each card, in the largest type size used, highlighted the agency: Rhode Island Commerce, with corporation in smaller type, along with the slogan, “Creating a New Generation of Innovation.”

Hype over substance
No doubt, any effort to push the envelope in order to grow the state’s innovation economy, in the wake of the 38 Studios debacle, which is still under investigation at the State House, by the R.I. State Police, and being pursued in a civil lawsuit in the courts, could be considered by some to be heroic.

CommerceRI’s messaging struck ConvergenceRI as self-aggrandizing. Particularly, because ConvergenceRI had spent the news conference standing next to Dr. Moses Goddard, whose firm, CytoSolv, had announced just two days before that it been acquired by Semma Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass., firm. It’s very much a Rhode Island success story, with the firm adding new jobs at its Rhode Island location. [See link to ConvergenceRI story below.]

Goddard has been one of the leading practitioners in Rhode Island in the life sciences research enterprise with a pioneering legacy going back three decades, involved in the launch of a number of firms. Surprisingly, neither Raimondo nor Pryor acknowledged Goddard before, during or after the news conference.

Darin Early, the new president and COO of CommerceRI, who also attended the event, told ConvergenceRI that he had been unaware of Goddard’s presence. [Early also admitted he was unaware of what ConvergenceRI was, so Early promptly received an email with the latest newsletter.]

An argument could be made that Goddard, through his ongoing translational research and entrepreneurial efforts, had contributed much more in creating a “new generation” of innovation in Rhode Island than CommerceRI could ever dream of facilitating through its three new programs; but that is not a claim that the soft-spoken Goddard would ever consider making.

Goddard might have been able to offer some valuable insights into what was needed to invest in a new generation of innovation in Rhode Island – if anyone had asked him. No one from CommerceRI has – yet, Goddard told ConvergenceRI.

For the record, none of the other news media covering the made-for-the news-cycle announcement appeared to know who Goddard was, or sought him out for a comment or interview. So it goes.

The view from 30,000 feet
As supportive as the new programs, with their modest investments, may appear to be in promoting the innovation ecosystem, whether any of these programs will serve as the best way to support the growing innovation ecosystem within Rhode Island remains open to question and dialogue. Unfortunately, that dialogue is not occurring; instead, the effort is more about cheerleading.

Take research. There is a stream of about $250 million a year that flows into the biomedical research engine in Rhode Island. The fact that there is a “there there” has been validated by the initial findings by the Brookings Institute and its analysis now underway to target Rhode Island’s future opportunities for growth.

Some of the research being done for startup and emerging firms is performed by contractual research organizations, or CROs, often conducted outside the United States, in Europe or India. That is the model, for instance, that Mnemosyne Pharmaceuticals, which is now Luc Therapeutics, followed in its successful development as an early-stage drug development firm based in Rhode Island. Luc Therapeutics recently agreed to a large pre-clinical deal with Novartis on its fast-acting anti-depressant small molecules, potentially worth more than $300 million if all the goals moving to the clinic are met.

Similarly, for ProThera Biologics, which announced this week a major deal with ProMetic, a Laval, Quebec-based firm, to advance ProThera’s proprietary Inter-alpha Inhibitor Proteins into the clinic by 2017, the issue has not been so much about access to research dollars, which co-founder and CEO, Yow-Pin Lim, has proven very capable in attracting, having secured more than $8 million during the last decade.

Rather, the challenge has been the leap over the chasm known as “the valley of death” in translating the research into the clinic and then, into the marketplace.

Which is not to say that small research grants at $50,000 a shot will not pump some degree of extra oomph! into the state’s innovation ecosystem. An initial $100,000 research grant from Slater Technology Fund served as the catalyst in the founding of ProThera as a company.

The real [real as in Real Jobs] conversation that needs to take place – not as part of the political rollout of an over-hyped economic platform by the Raimondo administration – is this: how does Rhode Island need to position itself within the regional innovation economy? What is Rhode Island’s sweet spot in its relationship to the Boston and Cambridge ecosystem? How do industry clusters emerge as collaborative forces within the innovation ecosystem? What lessons can be learned from Massachusetts and its successful cluster growth in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, marine science and big data?

It’s the difference between managing for short-term political gain vs. long-term sustained economic growth. It may be a disliked fact, but job growth in the innovation ecosystem is a long-term strategy.

In Rhode Island, there has been much noise and hoopla about the accelerator model to promote new, innovative firms, as evidenced by Betaspring and The Founder’s League and even the new approach by MedMates to develop an accelerator for startup firms in the medtech sector as the way to grow the innovation economy.

The actual evidence of proof of concept for the accelerator model, despite an avalanche of good press clippings, has been somewhat sparse in Rhode Island. The latest incarnation of Betaspring, known as RevUp, has migrated up to Boston’s Innovation District.

[By the way, whatever happened with the federal audit of the more than $2 million in federal money that CommerceRI’s predecessor, the Economic Development Corporation of Rhode Island, channeled to Betaspring? Is it being swept under the rug, or will the state of Rhode Island have to pay back the money?]

The most successful model of seed investment has been the performance of the Slater Technology Fund, once backed by state funding and now dependent upon the resources of its investments.

The biggest gap in Rhode Island’s innovation ecosystem is the financial bridge to enable startup and early stage companies to achieve successful partnerships on a larger scale, to enable the firms to move beyond the initial seed money phase.

CytoSolv, IlluminOss, Luc Therapeutics and now ProThera Biologics have successfully made that leap and scaled up; Nabsys did not, unable to find a partner for its technology. All received initial seed funding through Slater, as did EpiVax, for that matter.

On the horizon is the proposed $100 million Wexford life sciences development proposed for the former Route 195 land, which will certainly jumpstart and redefine the innovation ecosystem in Rhode Island. The natural partner appears to be Brown University, with the opportunity to create a hub for collaborative neuroscience research as a potential part of the development. It will certainly be an economic victory for Rhode Island, one that the Raimondo administration will claim credit for – although it is far different from her original vision of an innovation institute focused on advanced manufacturing that was first articulated during her campaign for governor.

The new proposed development, which keeps inching forward through the machinations of tax stabilization agreements and additional land purchases, promises to help under gird the infrastructure of Rhode Island’s innovation ecosystem.

But it will not, in and of itself, address the lack of bridge financing so important to move new companies and their translational research into the clinic and the marketplace. The $25 million now targeted to help attract companies to locate in the reclaimed highway land might be better spent in support of helping emerging companies cross the chasm and avoid falling into the valley of death. More than putting cranes in the skyline, it would be about securing sustainable companies that grow the state’s innovation ecosystem – and create those good, high-paying jobs in the long run.

In Schilling we trust?
Amy Kempe, former spokeswoman for Gov. Donald Carcieri, now spokeswoman for R.I. Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, once exhorted the Carcieri team to promote the 38 Studios deal in the news media, ending her pitch with the infamous phrase: “In Schilling we trust.”

Yet, in her deposition for the civil suit now pending, Kempe claimed that she could not recall whether she had written the document that was sent out under her name. Further, she claimed that she was only trying to do her job in promoting the governor’s agenda.

On Monday, Nov. 23, Gov. Gina Raimondo and her team, along with the state’s entire Congressional delegation, will roll out the next phase of Real Jobs Rhode Island, announcing the funding of some 20 strategic industry partnerships, to support the efforts to develop training, education and human resources solutions needed to address their business and talent needs.

The initial announcement about Real Jobs RI occurred in August, with the scenic postcard backdrop of Claflin Medical Equipment’s warehouse in Warwick; the event scheduled for today will occur at Ximedica headquarters.

Once again, the Raimondo administration’s tradecraft of staging of the public relations event promises to be superb, with the news media accurately and diligently reporting the facts of the announcements.

One of the props for the event provided by CommerceRI promoted the future “virtuous cycle” over the previous “vicious cycle” for the state’s economy, where investments turn into job growth and increased revenues, taken directly from the slide deck from Raimondo’s “Stop the Decline and Spark the Comeback.”

ConvergenceRI would not be surprised if the same prop were to be used at Ximedica, framing and promoting the good news messaging.

Walking back down Chestnut Street from EpiVax after the news conference to the nodal point in the innovation hub in Providence, Olga’s Cup + Saucer, a number questions arose for ConvergenceRI: Why was it necessary to oversell the initiatives? The development of the innovation economy is almost always iterative, as disruptive business models change the landscape. Why the glossy postcards as collateral? Who’s the targeted audience for them? What if the findings of the Brooking Institute analysis change the targets and suggest moving the goalposts? How nimble are these new initiatives? Why take on such a tone of glibness? What is the role of the news media in covering such events? What are the metrics and benchmarks for these new initiatives, particularly for job creation? All good questions, all unanswered, all not part of the coverage by the news media – yet.