Kentucky's innovation hubs remapped

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 Commisison (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.

One change in the procedure this time around is that applicants were asked to propose counties from two different area development districts (ADDs). Note: The commonwealth is composed of 12 ADDs in total.

“From an innovation hub standpoint, that was just so large, so that was some of the impetus around the unique request in this RFP to say, ‘Let’s have the innovation hubs propose their service regions, so that they could make them a bit more equal in county size.”

"This strategic shift will enable us to provide even more targeted and impactful support, driving economic growth and stability throughout the region," McWhorter said in a statement to Business First. "We are committed to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in Eastern Kentucky, and this change will help us better serve our communities and fulfill our mission."

"This gives [Sabrina] much more bandwidth to focus on truly tech and tech-enabled, innovative companies," added Bajorinas.

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.”

Bajorinas echoed Raney’s comments, saying that historically the hubs have collaborated in providing services and resources to all Kentucky-based founders.

In addition, Louisville-based Amplify has also gone from eight counties to 12. After some shuffling around, Amplify picked up the eight counties that make up the Lincoln Trail Area Development District — with Elizabethtown being the largest city in that district. Interestingly, Oldham County is no longer in Amplify’s service area — as it sits in the territory of Covington-based Blue North. Note: To better reflect the change, Amplify is no longer going by Amplify Louisville.

Below is a breakdown of the newly created service areas of six innovation hubs, along with the amount that each will get from the cabinet in its annual contracts from July 1 to June 30, 2025, according to contracts obtained through the site Transparency.ky.gov.

Budget award amounts (see below) were determined by the population of the areas that the innovation hubs represented.

Amplify

Awesome Inc

Blue North

Central Region Ecosystem for Arts, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CREATE)

Sprocket, Inc.

Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) Innovation