Nashville Launches Site to Help Build Innovation Community

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce unveiled a new website targeting the region’s entrepreneurial community. The Nashville Entrepreneurial Center provides insight and advice on starting a new company, local business and innovation news and several ways to connect to other entrepreneurs and investors. Though the site already offers a blog and social networking features, the group plans to expand their services to include additional resources for entrepreneurs seeking funding and other types of assistance.

The project is the result of two years of planning by the chamber and other regional groups. In 2007, Partnership 2010, an economic development outreach effort by the chamber, convened a task force to study the needs of the local entrepreneur community. The task force issued a list of short- and long-term recommendations to help the region leverage its relatively high-level of entrepreneurship into new jobs and greater regional wealth. The recommendations called for an online entrepreneur center that could serve as a focal point for outreach to this community. The new site is intend to help the region accomplish several goals including giving entrepreneurs a way to share their experiences and knowledge, providing a place to seek early-stage capital, improving city-wide coordination and encouraging students to pursue technology careers.

Currently, the site offers video and educational resources for entrepreneurs, including an Ask-An-Entrepreneur for personalized advice. The site also makes use of integration with social networking applications such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The site is envisioned as the first step in a region-wide effort to help create successful new businesses, with a focus on technology, healthcare, digital media and biomedical applications. Eventually, the Nashville Entrepreneur Center will reside in a physical location, offering space for new companies and hand-on assistance by entrepreneurs-in-residence.

Visit the Nashville Entrepreneur Center at: http://www.entrepreneurcenter.com/.

Effective Use of the Web to Advance TBED
Web 2.0 provides critical tools for building powerful virtual and real communities to encourage innovation and tech-based economic development – if done properly. See and hear about some of the most effective approaches to web-based TBED during a highly interactive breakout session at SSTI’s upcoming Annual Conference, Seize the Moment. The session will draw on the expertise of two successful web practitioners, Maria Meyers of US Sourcelink and Tim Haynes, Vice President of Marketing and Member Services with TechColumbus. More information is available at: http://ssticonference.org/schedule.html