MSC’s startup innovation and acceleration vision is to enable impactful innovations to achieve adoption and scale through strong institutions, effective partnerships, and supportive market conditions, while helping startups address real-world challenges.

Why does Startup Innovation and Acceleration (SIA) focus on innovation adoption?

A promising innovation is only part of the solution. Its impact depends on whether people and institutions can use, afford, and integrate it into their work and sustain its use.

SIA works with the challenge and identifies barriers to adoption. We bring together institutions, market actors, funders, and innovators to address those barriers.

Key barriers to innovation adoption include:

Insufficient evidence and fit: Solutions need to demonstrate their value, affordability, and suitability in actual operating environments
Misaligned incentives and fragmented responsibilities: Adoption stalls when the actors needed to make a solution work have different priorities or unclear roles
Limited institutional readiness:Procurement processes, staff capabilities, infrastructure, and existing workflows can constrain adoption;
Weak delivery and commercial models: Reaching users requires viable distribution, reliable service, and clear value for those who use, purchase, or deliver the solution;
Lack of a sustained pathway beyond pilots: Wider adoption requires committed ownership, recurring funding or revenue, and the capacity to deliver at scale.

These barriers show why ecosystem-level work must form a core part of innovation adoption, alongside startup support as an essential capability.

How does SIA enable innovation adoption?

System Catalyst Platforms (SCP)

Strengthen ecosystems to enable innovation adoption at scale.

Identify shared challenges and the systemic barriers that prevent adoption;

Align institutions, funders, market actors, and innovators around a common outcome;

Design challenge-led programs that address gaps in incentives, capabilities, coordination, and delivery;

Test relevant innovations alongside the ecosystem changes needed for their adoption;

Establish ownership, partnerships, and financing arrangements to sustain adoption and achieve scale.

Institutional Innovation Labs

Strengthen institutions so that they can test, adopt, and integrate innovations.

Identify institutional challenges and priority innovation needs;

Establish and manage innovation labs tailored to institutional goals;

Source relevant solutions and assess their fit with institutional needs;

Test solutions in real operating environments and build evidence for adoption;

Embed the lab within the institution and ensure it has the capabilities, processes, and ownership needed to identify, test, and adopt innovations on an ongoing basis.