The past two weeks were big ones for innovation on the Gulf Coast.

Last Monday, Gulf Coast Community Foundation announced the winner of our inaugural Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge. Healthy Earth–Gulf Coast, as the top team dubbed itself, is creating a sustainable seafood system that stands to transform an industry segment within our region’s Blue Economy.

The team aims to build a billion-dollar seafood industry here through sustainable-fishery certification, improved use of catch, a state-of-the-art processing plant in Manatee County and development of new international markets for locally sourced seafood and other value-added products. Their project also would negate environmental impacts of some current fishing practices. Ground zero for this sustainable economic engine is Sarasota Bay and the heritage fishing community of Cortez, hit so hard by a net ban two decades ago. I’d say that project meets our original challenge to “save our seas, feed our communities, and grow our Blue Economy.”

Of course, our foundation didn’t create the Healthy Earth team or its idea. Nor will our $375,000 in grants fully build out the team’s multipurpose processing plant. But Gulf Coast did help bring them together in the first place, as several team members initially met at a marine-science roundtable convened through our Bright Ideas on the Gulf Coast initiative. And our funds will pay for key pieces of the “sustainability” aspect of their vision, ensuring a meaningful public benefit as well as a differentiator that other coastal communities will want to look at.

Even better, our Challenge helped spur other new and unlikely partnerships that, while not winners in this competition, are nonetheless poised to become winners for our community and beyond. Projects led by Mote Marine Laboratory to develop new medicines from the sea and improve water-filtration technology, and by Selby Gardens to create ecologically friendly “living seawalls”—those are just a few innovations to gain real momentum since the launch of our Challenge. 

This incentive-grant challenge is just one timely example of the role philanthropy can and should play in economic development. As a community foundation, we’ve long believed that a healthy economy helps everyone, so that’s a place to invest our time and resources. And for our region’s particular changing characteristics, an innovation-based economy is where we should aim. To be communities that attract active retirees and young professionals alike; that can retain talented youth and provide jobs with family-sustaining wages; that leverages and sustains the cultural and environmental assets we cherish—that all requires an economy fueled by innovation, not dependent on services and seasons.

I mentioned two weeks of innovation highlights. Before our Challenge finale, the Sarasota-Manatee area spent a week showcasing companies, institutions and people transforming the healthcare industry with the region’s first-ever Health Innovation Week. Coordinated by the EDCs of Sarasota County and the Bradenton Area (a collaboration that itself exemplifies the effort’s regional vision), the week comprised open houses, a conference and an expo, as well as media focus on the diverse and thriving activity that could transform the Gulf Coast into a center of health innovation. Check out www.HealthInnovationProject.com to learn more. 

True innovation isn’t about special events or moments in time. It comes from a mindset, and it must be relentless. Gulf Coast laid out a roadmap to help move our region toward an innovation economy back in 2013, and while the tactics and execution evolve, the underlying strategy remains as solid as ever.

Events and achievements like those earlier this month are exciting manifestations of the continuous hard work of so many innovators in our community. As a community foundation, Gulf Coast and our donors are committed to the research, collaboration and investments that it takes to reach them and grow beyond. 

Mark Pritchett is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.