Expanding the industries of ideas: understanding the link between research investments, jobs, and skills

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) awarded the Regents of the University of Michigan a $3.34 million Cooperative Agreement on July 1, 2025, to expand the Industries of Ideas (IOFI) project through June 30, 2028. This award funds the development of collaborative data infrastructure, empirical methods, and information tools designed to assess the relationship between research investments in critical and emerging technologies—initially focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI)—and their impact on regional job creation and workforce skills across the United States. The project will partner with state governments, local businesses, chambers of commerce, and labor market and education agencies to build actionable intelligence systems that support high-wage, high-skill job development and enable federal funding agencies to direct resources more strategically toward intended workforce outcomes.

Building on an NSF pilot investment conducted in partnership with the State of Ohio, the expansion initiative extends the prototype's scope to incorporate higher education and skills data while initiating collaboration with additional state participants, beginning with the State of New Jersey in Year 1. By Year 2, the project will prototype community-designed information products and facilitate engagement with eight to ten additional states. The methodology and frameworks developed through this AI-focused initiative are designed to be generalizable across multiple science and technology domains and economic sectors, providing a foundation for bottom-up approaches to strategic science and technology funding that accelerates innovation and economic development nationally.

Abstract

The industries of ideas (iofi) expansion project seeks to develop new collaborations, data infrastructure, measures and information tools to assess the links between research investments in critical and emerging technologies and regional jobs and skills across the country. The project works with local businesses, chambers of commerce and state labor market, education and economic development agencies, and state governors, to collaboratively build data and actionable information tools that can proactively support the creation of high-wage, high-demand, high skill-jobs and help funding agencies direct resources more effectively to achieve intended workforce outcomes. The project focuses initially on investments in artificial intelligence (AI) to develop an approach and empirical methods that can be extended to any science and technology domain and economic sector. The results will provide a foundation that informs bottom-up approaches to strategic science and technology funding that both informs and accelerates the creation of new products, industries and jobs across the nation. This work expands upon an NSF pilot investment that developed a prototype collaborative network to measure how research investments in AI and electric vehicles are linked to regional firms and jobs in partnership with the state of ohio. In expansion year 1 this project will extend the prototype?s scope to include higher education and skills data and begin to collaborate with other state participants through extensive outreach work anchored on the collaborative, stakeholder-driven product design process that was fostered in the initial prototype. Initial data extensions begin in year 1 in collaboration with the state of new jersey. In year 2 the project will work with key communities to prototype community designed information products and facilitate the addition of eight to ten additional states. Year 3 will begin the process of scaling and measure validation by providing implementation tools to those additional states. Across all three years the collaborations will engage epscor jurisdictions, federal science agencies, established and startup businesses, and institutions of higher education to collaboratively identify data, measures and tools capable of strengthening links between science investments, economic activity, and jobs. Analyses will be tuned to produce forward-looking insights into likely occupational and skills demand for new technologies as they go to full production. The results could significantly influence how regional science investments are made and optimized across the nation, driving increased economic competitiveness and productivity by deepening our understanding of the crucial link between research, technology driven workplace changes, jobs, skills and earnings. This new collaboratively developed empirical framework, data, and infrastructure will, for the first time, directly engage state institutions, data users, and producers to quantify relationships among research investments, regional job markets, local workforce dynamics, and other key economic outcomes of technology investment. A key iofi contribution stems from its integration of many constituencies and datasets including science and technology metadata, data from universities, state workforce and state higher education agencies, and private job postings information on emerging skills data. The iofi project, anchored on AI investments, will build new tools for an essential emerging sector of the economy that is of pressing interest at the regional, state, and national levels, but that can scale to other technologies. The tools will provide local, timely and actionable information built on comprehensive statistically valid data designed by and for relevant user communities. The insights and outcomes from this research project can help inform science policy and make significant intellectual contributions to multiple fields of research and practice. Investment in this project is both consistent and well aligned with the goals and broad strategic objectives of NSF tip. This investment is consistent with agency?s goals and the scientific and technological community?s interest in understanding how investment to produce innovation in critical and emerging technologies drive economic outcomes of relevance to all americans. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.