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REAP Team Kentucky

REAP Team Kentucky came together through an initiative focused on examining the Future of Work in Kentucky, starting in early 2017 as a dialogue between Kentucky innovators and labs at MIT. Following in the footsteps of the territory of Puerto Rico, Kentucky became the first U.S. state/region of a state to be accepted into MIT REAP as part of Cohort 6.
Kentucky’s economy has been in significant transformation in the past decade, and MIT REAP gave a chance for a team to come together from across stakeholder groups and throughout the state to find new ways to collaborate.
As a result, members of Team Kentucky formed AccelerateKY, launched in October 2021, to focus on connecting, informing, and inspiring Kentuckians to build a stronger innovation ecosystem through drawing on the principles of MIT REAP and building new approaches to piloting innovation projects.

Team Members

University
Government
Corporate
Risk Capital
Entrepreneur

Innovation Ecosystem Stakeholder Model

Luke Ramsay
Champion
Talent Management and Organizational Development Consultant, Lexmark
Rusty Justice
Co-Founder, Bit Source
Jared Arnett
Executive Director at SOAR
John Roush
President, Centre College
Dr. Alison Davis
Director, Community and Economic Development Initiative of Kentucky & Professor of Agricultural Economics: University of Kentucky
Vijay Kamineni
Business Transformation Leader, Logan Aluminum
Amanda Kool
Director, Legal Operations at Commonwealth Commercialization Center (C3)
Michael Strysick
Chief Communications Officer, Centre College
Vincent Edwards
CEO, Empire Builders
Henry "Buddy" Steen
CEO, Western Kentucky University Innovation Campus

Team Strategy

  • Challenge & Opportunity
  • Strategy & Progress

Kentucky sits at the intersection of three cultural regions of the U.S.: the Midwest, the South, and Appalachia. Tied with its neighbor Tennessee for bordering the most number of other states, Kentucky has a great opportunity to draw on being a regional collaboration point, if we could find ways to strengthen the state’s capacity for collaboration across county and regional lines. With staple traditional industries like tobacco farming and coal-powered energy significantly disrupted, innovators from across Kentucky stakeholder groups have come together to seek new ways of working.

Since finishing the MIT REAP program in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kentucky REAP team launched the nonprofit AccelerateKY in October 2021 with an event that brought innovators from around the state and across stakeholder groups together to get to know one another outside usual circles. Since that time, AccelerateKY has helped launch a range of new initiatives. Most prominently, AccelerateKY has helped launch the 501(c)(3) Metals Innovation Initiative—with a mission to make Kentucky the destination for metals innovation. It’s also supported an NSF-funded initiative in two Appalachian school districts to tie computational thinking curriculum to a history of Appalachian ingenuity in those communities, a pilot program for content creators in Appalachian with the University of Southern California Civic Imagination Incubator, a virtual fellowship with the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and a range of other projects supporting Kentucky innovation initiatives and ecosystem partners.

Core Regional Metrics

INNOVATION CAPACITY

Ability to develop new to the world innovations from inception through to the market.

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People

Kentucky has a population of 4.3 million. Approximately 2.5 million live in urban areas, and 1.8 live in rural ones.

Performance

Coming soon!

Demand

Coming soon!

Funding

Coming soon!

Culture & Community

Kentucky is divided into 120 counties.

Infrastructure

Top industries include healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPACITY

Ability to start and build new to the world businesses from inception to maturity.

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Funding

Coming soon!

Demand

Coming soon!

People

Coming soon!

Performance

Coming soon!

Culture & Community

Coming soon!

Infrastructure

Coming soon!