The U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor (USRIC) is housed at the University of Maryland’s International Incubator, is a tangible result of the cooperative relationship between American Councils, UMD, UNN, the state of Maryland and the Nizhny Novgorod region in the context of the EURECA pilot program. EURECA is a program funded by the U.S.-Russia Foundation (USRF) and will be expanded and strengthened over the coming four years. Based on an initial biomedical focus – an area that UMD and UNN continue to refine and expand - USRIC will serve as a platform connecting Russian research universities and entrepreneurs with their US counterparts while engaging appropriate state and regional governmental structures.
A true Triple Helix partnership, the U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor represents the type of effective collaboration between state governments and private industries, with universities as the driving force that can be a central vehicle for innovation-based regional economic development. Maryland and Nizhny Novgorod were uniquely positioned to actualize this collaboration, thanks to their shared history of regional cooperation and the work of their powerhouse research institutions. USRIC puts the Triple Helix into practice: it will serve as the model on which other regional partnerships between both countries can be built.
As the coordinator of USRIC, American Councils has focused its role on reducing the barriers to commercialization partnerships for both countries and cultivating and facilitating new, productive collaborations. As several members of the U.S.-Russia BPC Innovation Working Group have pointed out, “Innovation is not just about money and technology. It is about people, networks and a culture of entrepreneurship.” In envisioning the broad landscape of collaboration, American Councils has recognized that these relationships take place on both a ‘macro’ level (Triple Helix regional partnerships around shared clusters), and a ‘micro’ level (individual startups and research projects that may, themselves, seed larger-scale relationships). By catalyzing new regional collaborations between our nations and responding to shared goals, USRIC advances the objectives of the new EURECA program and extends the substantial benefit of this program to new U.S. and Russian institutions. And it is actualizing one of the key goals of the U.S.-Russian BPC Innovation Working Group.