Governor Matt Meyer joined the Delaware Prosperity Partnership (DPP) today to announce Innovate Delaware, a new statewide initiative to serve as a central hub to support innovators and better connect them to existing partners and opportunities up and down Delaware.
Housed within DPP, Innovate Delaware will broaden the state’s appeal to local startups, attract new emerging companies from beyond the region – particularly those in financial technology, next-generation chemical products, clean energy, sustainable advanced materials and biopharma manufacturing – and enrich Delaware’s business environment for those whose work leads to impactful and scalable advancements.
The Innovate Delaware program will focus on four integrated programmatic pillars: pipeline development, capital attraction, corporate connection and international soft landing. It will include two foundational infrastructure elements: a relationship network architecture and a digital “front door” platform.
Innovate Delaware’s first major project will be running the Delaware Rural Health Challenge. The Challenge is a reverse-pitch, multi-stage health technology accelerator program designed to define specific gaps and barriers in delivering care to rural, medically underserved and health professional shortage areas and select innovative health technology companies to deploy novel solutions to address these issues.
“Delaware has all the ingredients to lead in innovation,” said Governor Matt Meyer. “We have world-class research institutions, talented entrepreneurs, and a prime, central location. Now we have the infrastructure to turn great ideas into great companies. Innovate Delaware will attract investment and create good-paying jobs to win the future for every Delawarean.”
Innovate Delaware follows the DPP’s 2025 Delaware Science & Technology Assessment and other recent examinations which found that the advantages of Delaware’s business environment — such as its legal and regulatory structure, its proximity to major capital markets and its anchor research institutions — have been underutilized by startups and established innovative firms because necessary connective infrastructure does not yet exist at scale. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut and other competing and peer states already have made sustained, coordinated investments in their own innovation infrastructure that have compounded in economic development value.
Each of the pilot’s four pillars targets a distinct area of improvement for the state’s innovation ecosystem: 1) increasing the number of scalable, science and technology-based startups; 2) increasing the availability of and access to startup and venture capital; 3) fostering collaboration between corporations, startups and research and development organizations to accelerate innovation and market growth; and 4) attracting startups and talent from outside the United States and providing them with a structured landing package.
The relationship network architecture will include partner memoranda of understanding, referral protocols and a coordinated signal to continue to work together. Innovate Delaware will not replace the incredible work by community partners to support innovators. Rather, Innovate Delaware will expand on this work to better allow innovators to navigate available resources. For instance, the digital “front door” platform, designed in response to the Governor’s Executive Order 21, will serve as the central intake and referral system for Delaware’s innovation ecosystem and will track startups registered, investor profiles, referrals made and program outcomes to convert institutional knowledge into a measurable, repeatable process. As the public-facing identity for this work, Innovate Delaware will connect entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and business leaders with the resources needed to grow and scale in the First State.
“The four-pillars approach will systematically improve Delaware’s competitiveness in the attraction, development and retention of high-growth companies, venture capital and innovation talent,” said Noah Olson, vice president of Innovation at DPP. “It also extends DPP’s capacity to serve the innovation economy with the same rigor and level of activity the organization brings to traditional business attraction.”
As a public-private 501(c)(3) nonprofit, DPP operates on a $3.1 million budget funded through the state Bond Bill and by investments from Delaware’s private sector. DPP will use separate monies from the Delaware Strategic Fund — totaling $1.36 million over two years — to fund the personnel, technology, marketing and events required to implement Innovate Delaware.
The Challenge will be supported by the Rural Health Transformation Program and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $157,394,963.86 with 100 percent funded by CMS/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CMS/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
“The Delaware Strategic Fund is designed to support investments that generate measurable economic returns for Delaware — companies created, jobs produced, capital deployed and tax revenue generated — and DPP’s four-pillar innovation strategy is precisely such an investment,” Olson continued. “DPP is grateful to have the support of the state to launch our plans, which will move our existing innovation work from primarily relationship-based interactions to systems-level infrastructure that will create durable, measurable impact.”
Leaders who play key roles in Delaware’s innovation ecosystem are applauding the approach:
“This is a moment that calls for research not only defended but also advanced through the acceleration of its translation into the world,” said Dr. Laura Carlson, president of the University of Delaware. “The University of Delaware embraces the Governor’s vision of an innovation economy and stands ready alongside the Delaware Prosperity Partnership to create an enabling and fostering environment in Delaware for startups and founders.”
