Principal Investigator Scott Stern
Co-investigators William Aulet , Dame Fiona Murray
Project Website http://reap.mit.edu/
The MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) is a multi-year educational initiative designed to help regions accelerate economic development and job creation through thoughtfully designed and effectively enhanced innovation-based entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP) provides opportunities for communities around the world to engage with MIT in an evidence-based, practical approach to strengthening innovation-driven entrepreneurial (IDE) ecosystems. The MIT REAP Framework consists of a series of action learning mechanisms to translate, convene, and educate teams of regional leaders through a five-stakeholder approach. The MIT REAP teams address their existing system by developing a strategy to deploy new interventions to improve it.
We achieve the mission by translating research insights into practical frameworks, convening stakeholders focused on innovation-driven entrepreneurship (IDE), and educating regional leaders through team-based interaction to achieve economic and social progress.
(*) Translate research and expertise into practical frameworks, approaches and actions with widespread global applications.
(*) Convene stakeholders (corporate, risk capital, entrepreneur, university and government) from ecosystems around the world to build a community for collaboration and learning.
(*) Educate regional innovation ecosystem leaders through team-based learning to facilitate meaningful economic and social outcomes.
(*) Impact regions through the development of new programmatic and policy interventions that build on strengths and support weaknesses to support IDEs.
MIT REAP admits up to 8 partner regions annually to participate in the two-year engagement. A typical MIT REAP region has a population of 1-10 million people. Each partner region has a team comprised of 5-8 highly driven and influential regional members and is headed by a regional team champion. All five major stakeholder groups are represented in an MIT REAP team: government, corporate, academia, risk capital, and the entrepreneurial community. All team members must speak English fluently to participate in the workshops.
MIT REAP involves four action-based learning cycles over a two-year period. These cycles involve highly interactive workshops every 6-9 months, which are interspersed by action phases:
(*) Throughout the program, there are 4 workshops. A typical workshop is 3 days and consists of lecture & discussion, case study analysis, ecosystem engagement tours, programmatic deep dives, group work report-outs, and preparation for action phases. Three workshops are hosted at MIT, and one workshop is hosted by a selected partner region. (*) Action phases are active time between workshops during which teams return home to deepen their analysis, validate assumptions with a broad network, and implement new programs and policies. There are 4 Action Phases over the course of the program. See here for an example program launched.