Remapped: Kentucky's Innovation Hubs
Stephen P. Schmidt, Reporter for Louisville Business First
July 18, 2024
More equal shares.
If a theme emerged from the remapping of the counties serviced by Kentucky’s six innovation hubs, it would be that.
On July 1, at the start of the fiscal year for the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, a new remapping of counties served by the hubs took effect — and taking a look at the previous layout, some of the changes are significant in terms of coverage areas.
“There’s a lot of emphasis and focus on the hubs reaching out to a much greater degree, especially into the rural counties to make their services more well known,” said Lisa Bajorinas, the executive director of the Kentucky innovation hubs. “So creating more awareness, to increasing access to their various services and capabilities. And the hubs are all … with finite resources. They’re having to utilize more partners in those rural counties to help bring this all to fruition.”
The most noticeable difference is the service area of the innovation arm Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) going from 54 counties — to mirror the footprint of those counties that are part of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) — down to 29.
The tech hubs are remapped generally every four years, according to Bajorinas, by opening submissions for request for proposals (RFPs) about how the hubs can best serve the state’s regional entrepreneurial communities. The RFP process was overseen by Katie Smith, the cabinet’s deputy secretary.
Another change of note is the increase of Lexington-based Awesome Inc, which went from nine counties to 28, the second largest number.
Awesome Inc Founder Brian Raney told me that although his coverage area has grown close to four times as large, his organization’s mission will not change much — as it looks to provide resources for founders throughout the commonwealth.
Those events include its annual 5 Across pitch competition (which will conclude on Dec. 4 in Lexington) and its founder retreat, being held this year from Aug. 15-17 at Barefoot Republic Camp & Retreat Center in Fountain Run, Kentucky.
“We’ve kind of always had a mission to serve the entire state,” Raney said. “We will continue to partner with SOAR and several other partners that we’ve put into our proposal to help serve those counties that are a little bit more remote from Fayette County. I think this is really just kind of the cabinet’s way of restructuring who’s going to be held accountable to serving those counties, but not solely who’s going to be doing all the work for those counties.”
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About the Author:
Stephen P. Schmidt is a Reporter for Louisville Business First that covers technology, startups, finance and the bourbon industry.