Election 2024: Is Your Company Ready for What Comes Next?

Want to know the current frontrunner to win on November 5th? Meet anxiety and uncertainty.

As the U.S. careens toward one of its most unpredictable presidential elections in modern political history, Americans find themselves in the middle of a national coin flip. With each candidate presenting starkly contrasting visions for the economy, environment, and other policy areas, the business world remains in a state of heightened anticipation.

The stakes are particularly intense for innovation focused companies and start-ups working on cutting edge technologies, where even slight policy deviations can open market avenues for rapid, sustained growth or bring these ambitions crashing to the ground. Will federal funding programs grow or shrink? Will the permitting landscape ease up or tighten? From tech regulation and clean energy incentives to international trade, uncharted waters lie ahead. When the only prediction for the election is uncertainty itself, these companies must prepare for a range of possible outcomes.

In this post, we will look at what political uncertainty means for innovators and early-stage tech companies. In the next post, we will focus on the perspective of mature, foreign companies exploring capital investment projects in the US and wondering what the hell is going on over here.

What Uncertainty Means for Innovation:

The shifting political landscape doesn’t just make for good headlines. It also creates tangible risks and opportunities for innovators and early-stage tech companies. Here’s a few example areas of how the election could affect your company’s trajectory and why thinking strategically now can position you for long-term success.

Funding Programs: Which Direction Will the Wind Blow? The allocation of federal support for clean tech, advanced manufacturing, defense, and other subject areas hangs in the balance this election season. For companies in the innovation space, federal grants, tax credits, and other incentives can provide crucial non-dilutive funding that supports technology development, major capital projects, and other programs. That said, with each side of the political aisle offering vastly different approaches to these programs, businesses must be prepared for potential shifts and reorient government funding strategies accordingly.

While America’s two primary political parties seemingly can’t agree on which way is up, it appears they’ve found a common enemy in globalization. Over the first half of this decade, a new era of economic and industrial policy has swept up the western world, with the principles of free trade and multinational supply chains that dominated the late twentieth century increasingly on the retreat in favor of more insular economic doctrine. From reshoring targeted manufacturing to spurring growth in strategic technologies, federal funding opportunities are a key mechanism for the government to pursue this objective.

The relevance of these funding opportunities to specific companies comes down to the federal government’s substantive industrial focus, ability to legislate, and foresight to sustain programs beyond a single term, all three of which vary greatly between the two prospective administrations. ?A future Harris Administration will likely see a continuation and emboldening of many Biden Administration clean energy programs like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. A future Trump Administration will likely attempt to cut some of these pre-existing programs and focus new funding on American manufacturing and more traditional energy production. Some of this may also simply boil down to partisan semantics, where a battery component funding program is ‘clean technology’ according to a Harris White House and ‘manufacturing’ according to a Trump White House, but ultimately funding the same objectives and recipient companies.

Recommendation: Now is a good time to strategize. Begin identifying key areas of potential government funding that are hypothetically relevant to your business. Concoct plans to ensure you’re ready to advocate for programmatic continuation or creation, and ensure you’re prepared to capture and execute when these funding programs eventually come to the fore.

Regulatory Landscape: Will the Tide Ebb or Flow? A new administration or a continuation of the current one could mean substantial shifts in regulatory priorities, affecting everything from data privacy to emissions and environmental compliance. Innovators in fields like energy, AI, life sciences, and aerospace could find themselves facing new compliance and permitting requirements that slow the execution of capital projects or close out paths to markets entirely.

At the same time, there may be opportunities for expansion into less regulated spaces, and strategically positioning corporate objectives within new regulatory policy frameworks may enable business growth by structuring advantages over competitors.

Recommendation: Now is a good time to strategize. Map out your technology programs, go-to-market strategy, and major capital projects against hypothetical regulatory frameworks. Identify risks, flesh out mitigation tactics, and make contingency plans. Shore up relationships with key government stakeholders in relevant policy arenas.

Social License and Community Engagement: Must-Have Anchors in Uncertain Waters Projects with major environmental, community, or other similar impacts already walk on the knife’s edge of viability, but the modern sociopolitical ecosystem poses significant new threats. Any negative element of a project in the general public’s perception—founded or unfounded—can spread like wildfire and create new, unexpected, and often unnecessary risks to execution. One single such event can bring down the local, state, or even federal axe on an entire project. Presidential election outcomes aside, our society is highly polarized, the information environment is volatile, and small issues can easily be co-opted by competitive interests for nefarious gain.

Good social license and community engagement work is like good forest management, with businesses working to tamp down factors prone to sparking a blaze. Great social license and community engagement work is like planting fireproof trees. This involves genuinely building a positive corporate reputation in the surrounding community and across relevant government jurisdictions—converting potential detractors into champions and discussing any concerns with a built-in assumption of honesty and good intent.

Recommendation: You guessed it. Now is a good time to strategize. Shore up relationships with key community and government champions who can help positively amplify your company’s interests. Discern both real and perceived risks to how business activities are interpreted by various stakeholders and integrate mitigation tactics with communications plans. Identify genuine opportunities for corporate engagement with local and regional communities. ?

Embrace Uncertainty with a Plan

You might have noticed a theme here: now is a good time to strategize. While the 2024 election brings uncertainty, there is meaningful work that innovators and early stage companies can do now to proactively position themselves for growth in 2025 and beyond.

Civic Forge’s Solutions Discovery Process is designed to do just that. Understanding the challenges at the core of your endeavor and where they intersect with the public sphere is where we start with every client because true government solutions only stem from genuine problem identification. At the end of this process, we deliver a customized roadmap for your business in the form of an actionable Government Affairs Strategy. We will then work with you to implement these recommendations as if we’re part of your team, providing ongoing support that is flexible, responsive, and focused on delivering real, measurable outcomes.

In times of uncertainty and upheaval, ?the right strategy can be the difference between momentum and missed opportunities. At Civic Forge, we’re here to help your company not just survive the post-election landscape but thrive in it. Want to set up an introductory call and learn more about our process? Take a break from non-stop election news coverage and doomscrolling LinkedIn to reach out to us at [email protected].