Facilitating Connections Between Innovators and the Energy Industry: Insights From the American-Made Network

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy established the American-Made program to offer prizes and competitions as a government funding mechanism in addition to traditional funding options like grants. The American-Made program is a U.S. Department of Energy- (DOE) funded program that works to advance domestic energy innovation. The program is broken into two branches, which work together to achieve this mission: American-Made Challenges and the American-Made Network. American-Made Challenges are prizes and competitions that award non-dilutive funding and other incentives to startups, entrepreneurs, students, and beyond for solving a defined energy innovation challenge. The American-Made Network is an ecosystem of energy industry partners representing a wide breadth of energy and business expertise, including national laboratories, incubators, manufacturers, law firms, test facilities, business development experts, and more. Those competing in challenges are encouraged to leverage the network as they seek partners and vendors to test, validate, and grow their businesses during and beyond the prize, bringing them closer to commercialization. The primary goal of the network funding secured for this scope of work was to accelerate the development, commercialization, and adoption of innovation in energy technologies. Network members do this by supporting innovators competing in American-Made competitions, as well as more broadly supporting DOE programs such as SBIR/STTR by providing a ready group of proposal reviewers. This project expanded the network to create an ecosystem of over 500 organizations across the nation that are primed to quickly support DOE programs. American-Made staff funded by this project evaluate all organizations prior to membership acceptance to ensure they can provide valuable, consistent support. Within the network is a subset of organizations known as Power Connectors, which are companies contracted with the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) to provide specific services and complimentary support to applicants in select prizes and competitions.