Vibrant Virginia: New E-Book Available

For the past few years, Virginia Tech’s Office of Economic Development has been spearheading a program called Vibrant Virginia, a statewide effort to link Virginia’s higher education institutions in a shared campaign to foster “collaboration between universities and communities, with the goals of building connections between urban and rural, and creating a Virginia full of economic vitality.”   This program has supported webinars and events, and has sponsored several innovative projects as well.  It’s also producing an e-book that will be released in several rounds over the coming weeks.  The first chapters, focused on economic and workforce development are now out.  These chapters include a contribution from me and my Virginia Tech colleague, Scott Tate, that examines entrepreneurial ecosystem building efforts in the regions around Charlottesville and Roanoke-Blacksburg.   In keeping with one of Vibrant Virginia’s themes, our analysis (Connecting Entrepreneur Ecosystems across Urban and Rural Regions: Lessons from Central and Western Virginia) focuses on connecting rural and urban regions, and is based on our own work in various projects funded by the GO Virginia initiative.   Other chapters in this first round of releases examine workforce development issues, and future chapters will discuss placemaking, public health, and infrastructure issues.   The book is being shared on a new platform, Discourse, which requires creating your own (free!) account.  You can sign up here.