At SRI’s Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy, McFarland guides governments and regions toward ecosystems that transform technological change into sustainable growth.
SRI’s Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy (CISP) enables clients to achieve long-term economic and social impact through effective investments in science, technology, and innovation. From Arizona and Oregon to the U.K. and Japan, the center creates roadmaps and strategies that help emerging innovation efforts thrive, whether that means rethinking how bioscience fits into a state’s economic future or using AI to pinpoint regional skills gaps.
Here, CISP executive director Christiana McFarland unpacks how the center achieves results, shares her path to technology-driven economic development, and explains how the larger SRI ecosystem gives CISP an edge in cultivating innovation strategies that work in the real world, not just on paper.
How do you describe CISP’s work?
We partner with federal agencies, R&D institutions, regions, and countries to help them create innovative places. Specifically, we determine how best to direct science and technology investments so that they are strategic and impactful in the long-term. We spend a lot of time not only understanding the strengths and gaps in innovation assets — like talent pipelines, research infrastructure, and policy environments — but also the networks of people and institutions that must collaborate to align assets and scale innovation. Our team approaches projects with both rigorous analysis of ecosystems and deep stakeholder engagement to ensure that our strategies reflect the realities of communities, industries, and institutions.
“Technology can be a powerful driver of growth, but it also introduces disruption, which requires foresight and adaptability.” — Christiana McFarland
A defining strength of CISP is that we’re embedded within one of the world’s leading R&D institutes. We benefit from having colleagues in our labs who are advancing frontier technologies in areas like robotics, bioscience, and AI. We increasingly draw on those insights to ensure our strategies also reflect both technical realities and future possibilities. For example, when we partnered with a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory to assess the feasibility of a new fusion energy commercialization center, we were able to build on SRI’s long track record of creating pathways that move deep tech into markets.
The ability to design strategies with an eye to commercialization and real-world application ensures that our work goes beyond analysis and provides roadmaps that accelerate ecosystems toward tangible outcomes.
What led you to career focused on these kinds of projects?
My career has always been about understanding how places grow and adapt. At the National League of Cities, I worked on a wide array of issues, including housing, land use, finance, and economic development — challenges that are all interconnected in regional systems. I became very curious about that system, how it works, and how it can be adapted. And I explored that more deeply in my doctoral research on how regional economies support one another through supply chains, talent flows, and infrastructure.
Over time, I became increasingly drawn to the role of science and technology in shaping those systems. Technology can be a powerful driver of growth, but it also introduces disruption, which requires foresight and adaptability. That’s what excites me about the work at CISP: It brings together my background in systems thinking with the opportunity to help communities navigate technological change.
For instance, we recently supported Wisconsin in designing an electrification strategy, mapping the EV supply chain, identifying infrastructure and workforce gaps, and recommending actions to position the state as a globally competitive hub. I felt the same energy leading the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap 2025–2030, where we linked local research and talent assets to global opportunities like precision medicine and AI-enabled drug discovery.
Projects like these — where systems analysis and technology strategy combine to drive economic competitiveness — are what motivate me most.
How is CISP using AI in its work?
AI has become an essential tool in our work because it allows us to generate insights at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before. In Oregon’s 2024 Talent Assessment, for instance, we used natural language processing to analyze thousands of job postings. That gave us granular detail on skills mismatches across sectors from health sciences to advanced manufacturing — insights that helped the state understand not just what jobs were growing, but which skills were missing and how to fill those gaps.
“AI is not just about efficiency; it’s about foresight.” — Christiana McFarland
Looking ahead, one of the most exciting opportunities is connecting this type of workforce analysis with other modeling tools being developed in SRI’s labs. These tools can simulate dynamics such as how industries adapt to new technologies, how supply chains evolve, or how emerging clusters grow over time. By combining AI-driven skills forecasting with those capabilities, we can help leaders see not only today’s gaps, but understand how talent, technology, and markets may interact in the future.
AI is not just about efficiency; it’s about foresight. By embedding these tools into our ecosystem design work, we aim to give decision-makers practical, forward-looking insights that guide smarter investments in innovation capacity, workforce development, and infrastructure.
What’s your vision for CISP as Executive Director?
CISP’s strength lies in shaping strategies that align technology, markets, and policy — and turning them into practical results.
Our approach is proving to be effective across all sorts of diverse contexts. We are trusted by federal agencies to evaluate programs, build critical data systems, and develop research security protocols. At the state level, our Massachusetts’ robotics roadmap moved beyond cataloguing assets to catalyze a zero-equity accelerator that is fueling startups and sector growth. In Nevada, our Waterwise Economy framework informed state legislation and mobilized new investment in water technologies, showing how innovation design can strengthen both competitiveness and resilience. Internationally, from the U.K. to Japan, we’re mapping ecosystems, identifying strategic opportunities, and designing programs — showing how ecosystem principles can scale globally to accelerate innovation.
“We aim to build bold, practical strategies that turn ecosystems into lasting engines of economic and social impact.” — Christiana McFarland
Looking ahead, CISP is fortifying its role as a catalyst for innovation. We aim to build bold, practical strategies that turn ecosystems into lasting engines of economic and social impact.
Learn more about the Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy or contact us.
