By Dr. Prisca Tiasse
Founder and President
Los Alamos Makers

New Mexico Economic Development Department’s (NMEDD’s) recent publication (link) of its New Mexico Science & Technology Roadmap is creating a lot of buzz and excitement. The document highlights the state’s strong competitive advantages in key science and technology industries. It explicitly aims to translate high-priority science and technology into local high-paying jobs and calls for strengthening the innovation ecosystem.

For years, New Mexico’s economic development narrative has leaned on the assumption that the state’s federal and academic assets would be the primary engines of technology commercialization. The new Roadmap doubles down on that narrative, describing those critical assets as “a full innovation continuum” and “end-to-end capability”.

This over-reliance on large institutions, however, does not grapple with the reality that technology commercialization can’t rely on professors and lab scientists, who rarely have the time, incentives, or risk tolerance to found companies themselves.

According to that narrative, Los Alamos – home to one of the world’s most advanced scientific institutions – should naturally be a thriving innovation hub. With so much technical talent concentrated in one small place, the logic goes, startups should form organically, great ideas should move into prototypes, and the region should see a steady pipeline of commercialization.

But the truth on the ground does not reflect that myth.

Los Alamos is not, today, functioning as an innovation hub, and the reasons are structural. Until we address those structural gaps, no amount of strategic documents or aspirational branding will close the distance between our scientific strengths and our economic outcomes.

Without a realistic understanding of who actually starts companies, we will keep designing strategies around actors who are structurally unlikely to become entrepreneurs. In practice, the people who do start companies are often those outside traditional academic and lab tracks – postdocs, engineers, tinkerers, creatives, trailing spouses, and experienced industry professionals.

The recently released New Mexico Science & Technology Roadmap continues to rely on our large institutions as primary engines of job creation, even though nationally, the innovation landscape is shifting.

The National Science Foundation’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate has announced a new Tech Labs initiative – a pilot program designed to support a new generation of independent research organizations. The document describes such organizations as “innovative and institutionally independent organizational structures operating outside of existing academic, start-up, and industry constraints to fill a vital gap in the innovation ecosystem.” That language captures precisely what has been missing in Los Alamos and in much of New Mexico’s science-driven economic development.

If NSF is now explicitly encouraging bold experiments in independent labs and hybrid innovation spaces, New Mexico should be first in line to show what that looks like in a small, high-science community like Los Alamos.

Our current innovation ecosystem has world-class science but no early-stage launchpad.

Even when promising ideas appear, Los Alamos lacks the infrastructure that allows early, inexpensive experimentation. Large research facilities have been built here over the years, yet they consistently struggle to support the earliest stages of entrepreneurship. Los Alamos builds advanced facilities for companies that already exist, while the earliest-stage companies never get the chance to form.

Over the last 15 years, our County has invested heavily in economic development facilities – the Research Park, high-profile collaborations, and corporate-scale projects. Yet they don’t effectively serve early-stage founders or trailing spouses seeking pathways into the innovation economy.

When we examine successful innovation regions – from Kendall Square to Boulder to the Research Triangle – they all share something Los Alamos has never built:

• A space where early-stage innovators can work before they are companies.
• Not an incubator designed for tenants with funding.
• Not a research facility designed for mature projects.
• But a community-scale, multidisciplinary launchpad that serves as the entry point into the innovation ecosystem.

Los Alamos needs one element every Innovation Hub depends on: A crossroads for early-stage innovation. That is the overlooked solution Los Alamos has been missing.

It is time to recognize that Los Alamos Makers is not simply a makerspace. It functions as a missing institutional layer – the practical, flexible infrastructure that connects raw ideas in the community to prototypes and prototypes to companies.

It blends:

• Digital fabrication and creative-technology tools;
• Cross-disciplinary collaboration modeled more like a miniature Media Lab than a hobby shop;
• Workforce development pathways;
• Support for independent inventors and innovators;
• On-ramps to LANL partnerships, NMSBA, TRGR, and statewide commercialization programs;
• And even wet-lab access for early bioscience (in collaboration with The Community Lab).

This is the “missing middle” in New Mexico’s innovation architecture – a place where early ideas can take shape long before they are investment-ready or institutionally anchored.

Los Alamos Makers has already served as a launchpad for homegrown startups or a soft-landing site for out-of-state ventures considering relocating to New Mexico.

A region cannot become an innovation center without building shared public assets that lower the barriers for experimentation, skill-building, collaboration, and early-stage technical exploration.

Los Alamos Makers already performs this role organically and efficiently.

In conclusion, Los Alamos can become the innovation hub we envision if we invest in the infrastructure we’ve been missing:

• The scientific excellence is here.
• The talent is here.
• The unmet potential is undeniable.

What’s missing is the entry point – the place where early-stage researchers, students, creatives, engineers, and independent inventors can experiment, collaborate, and validate ideas long before traditional structures can support them.

Los Alamos Makers has quietly become that missing link.

If New Mexico and Los Alamos County wish to realize the ambitions outlined in the S&T Roadmap, the next step is clear:

Strengthen the ecosystem’s foundation – by supporting the community-scale programs, shared technical infrastructure, and early-stage innovation pathways that make all other strategies possible.

It is important to invest, appropriately and transparently, in public programs and shared infrastructure that allow innovation to begin in the first place. Public contracts for program delivery such as RFP processes for training, innovation programming, or community STEM services make it possible, without violating the state’s Anti-Donation clause.

An added benefit: During economic downturns, when lab space becomes unaffordable, grants shrink and VC risk tolerance drops, small, flexible, low-overhead, lean collaborative innovation spaces consistently outperform large, rigid institutions.