When we launched Alloy Partners, our mission was clear: Work with corporations to create startups that solve real problems. We believed — and still believe — that startup creation can be a powerful tool for unlocking growth where traditional innovation often stalls.
But something unexpected happened early in our journey: Universities and state governments started calling.
At first, it seemed surprising. But the more we listened, the more it made sense.
Like corporations, universities and states have unique insights and assets. They’re trying to convert knowledge into outcomes. They care deeply about impact, but often face structural limits on creating the truly new.
And, increasingly, they see startups as a way to leap over those obstacles.
Still, there was a difference — an important one:
- Corporations are rightly focused on their own bottom line.
- Universities and governments, on the other hand, are built to serve ecosystems. Their job is not just to innovate, but to lift entire regions, sectors, and communities.
This is where our work — originally shaped by the insights of Clay Christensen — starts to collide (in the best way) with another Harvard Business School icon: Michael Porter.
Cluster Theory, Explained
While the concept of economic concentration has been observed for more than a century, Michael Porter was the first to formalize it as Cluster Theory in the 1990s — framing it as a powerful tool for economic competitiveness, innovation, and policy.
Porter used a strategic lens to describe how geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, institutions, and talent can drive innovation and competitiveness. He argued that economic development doesn’t just happen through isolated firms — it flourishes when there’s a dense web of collaboration and competition among related players.
Clusters form when local assets — like industry incumbents, skilled labor, suppliers, research institutions, and capital — reinforce each other over time. Think of Silicon Valley in tech, Boston in biotech, or Wichita in aerospace (look it up).
These regions didn’t just benefit from one dominant player.
They became ecosystems that support wave after wave of new business creation.
Porter’s research also emphasized that governments and universities are key players in any successful cluster. So are corporations. And perhaps most importantly, so are startups — the vehicles through which new ideas hit the market and, eventually, reshape it.
Startups as a Force for Ecosystem Growth
That’s where Alloy Partners fits in.
Without intending to, we’ve found ourselves operating at the intersection of corporate strategy, academic insight, and regional economic development. And, increasingly, our venture-building model seems tailor-made to support modern clusters.
We’re not an incubator, accelerator, or policy shop. We build startups from scratch — startups informed by real-world problems and backed by the unique advantages of our partners.
In doing so, we’ve found that these startups often do more than solve a problem. They attract talent. They generate follow-on investment. They catalyze follow-on ventures. They send a signal to the ecosystem: Something is happening here.
Take Fieldbook Studio, our venture studio in Arkansas, which is focused on building the future of retail.
The state already has a global anchor in Walmart. But what if, alongside Walmart, there was a generation of startups creating new retail technologies, new consumer experiences, and new supply chain models? That’s cluster logic in action.
And it doesn’t happen overnight. Ecosystem development is slow, uneven, generational work. We are not naive enough to claim we are the keystone. But we are advocates. We believe that startups are the sharp edge of change — and that deliberately seeding them is one of the most high-leverage ways to build the future of an economy.
A Venture-Building Model for Clusters
What makes this all work? Four things:
- Corporations with real market insight and a willingness to invest in new growth
- Universities with research depth, talent, and a public mission
- Governments with policy tools and a mandate to lift regions, not just firms
- Investors with capital and a desire to deploy in overlooked regions
Alloy’s model is unusually good at convening these stakeholders around a shared goal: to turn big problems into startups, and startups into ecosystem drivers. When this works, the benefits don’t stop with the company that commissioned the work. They ripple outward.
And that's where Porter and Christensen start to overlap: Innovation at scale doesn’t happen in silos. It happens in systems.
Let’s Build Together
If you’re thinking about ecosystem growth — whether as a policymaker, university leader, corporate strategist, or economic developer — we’d love to explore what it would look like to build something together. And if you are looking at building startups with federal SSBCI funds, time is running out.
We’re not here to take credit for cluster development. But we are here to help it happen faster.
Let’s seed the startups your region needs — and accelerate the ecosystem that grows them.
