Founded in 1790, Washington DC was designed to be the capital of the United States and is named after its first president, George Washington. The city is famous for its monuments and museums, including the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the National Museum of American History. Washington DC is also the seat of the US federal government, making it an important center for international politics and diplomacy. With a population of around 700,000, Washington DC is a cosmopolitan and multicultural city, offering a wide variety of experiences, perspectives and opportunities. The Washington DC area boasts three airports: Washington-Dulles (IAD) and Baltimore-Washington (BWI), two international airports located outside the city, and Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) used for domestic flights and located close to downtown.

Renowned for its cultural richness, Washington DC boasts more than 74 museums and is home to the Smithsonian Institution, a complex of 19 museums and 9 research centers, managed by the US federal government, whose missions are editorial, museographic, pedagogical and educational, and which offers free access to the museums in its network.

As the center of American federal power, the Washington DC ecosystem naturally has a global influence. The DMV region, which encompasses Washington DC and the states of Maryland and Virginia, is home to the majority of the country’s national institutions. These include federal departments such as the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE), as well as major federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), which allocates research funding for universities, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These agencies have their own research centers and help to define and implement US science policy. Washington DC is also home to several international institutions, including the Fond monétaire international and the Banque mondiale. Other players in the ecosystem can take advantage of this proximity to political decision-makers and regulatory bodies to forge partnerships, promote their work and obtain funding.

As a result, the information sciences, defense and energy industries are particularly well developed here. The Dulles Technology Corridor, also known as Data Center Alley, a cluster of defense and technology companies in Northern Virginia, boasts the world’s largest concentration of data storage centers, including Alphabet (Google) and Amazon.

The Washington DC ecosystem is home to a large number of internationally renowned universities. For example, the University of Maryland has important partnerships with the federal government in healthcare, aerospace, defense, quantum computing and cybersecurity. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is particularly renowned in medicine and public health. It has the premier budget R&D des Etats-Unis in the United States, amounting to $3.1B in 2020, concentrated largely in the Applied Physics Lab, also supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and the DOD. Downtown Washington DC is home to two major private universities: George Washington University, renowned for its social sciences and business programs, as well as health and computer science, and Georgetown University, renowned for its public affairs programs.

Other major universities in the region include the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, part of the Ivy League network, the University of Pittsburgh, home to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Carnegie Mellon University, a national symbol of excellence in information sciences.

Academic and university support for innovation is evident in the structures and programs set up to support the emergence of startups. For example, the University of Maryland supports innovations in the energy transition through the Maryland Energy Innovation Accelerator and Mtech Ventures, and in the life sciences through the Fischell Institute. Another example is the Technology Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, which brings together researchers and healthcare professionals to provide digital solutions to medical challenges.

Local governments in the DMV region are putting in place policies and programs to encourage entrepreneurship, and investors are interested in digital technologies, energy and biotechnologies. Innovation is facilitated by the privileged access that entrepreneurs and investors in this ecosystem have to U.S. legislators and regulators in their respective industries

This particularity strongly guides the mission and operation of local incubators and accelerators. Thus, accelerators like CivStart, which supports technological innovations for government use, or Fed Tech, which supports tech startups with federal applications, attract entrepreneurs beyond the region.