{"id":241971,"date":"2025-10-26T19:43:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T19:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/241971\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T19:43:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T19:43:37","slug":"where-innovation-finally-comes-home-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/241971\/","title":{"rendered":"Where innovation finally comes home :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than an hour
\noutside downtown Raleigh, the landscape shifts from glass towers to pine
\nforests. The traffic thins, the pace of hectic activity (I call this hectivity)
\nslows, and you start to see a different kind of innovation. [Note – In rural
\ncommunities, \u201cinnovation\u201d is more likely to be called problem solving]. It
\ndoesn\u2019t rely on venture capital executives, ping pong table office culture or
\nhigh-rise skylines. It\u2019s built in barns, garages, diners, churches and
\nsmall-town coworking hubs. In rural economies, community tends to come before
\ncompetition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written
\nextensively about the entrepreneurial leadership that Wilson, NC has
\ndemonstrated over the years. Wilson\u2019s Gig East Initiative<\/a>, and associated Gig
\nEast Summit will reach a 10-year milestone<\/a> next year. Gig East is an initiative
\nto support entrepreneurship, arts, science and Technology (EAST), with Wilson
\nserving as a hub for eastern NC. It began with a decision to invest money into
\nbroadband infrastructure, backed by an annual budget to focus on
\nentrepreneurship, startup accelerator programs and small business support
\nservices. A major component of that strategy is the Gig East Exchange<\/a>, a
\nmunicipal run coworking facility, which turns\u00a0 five years old next month.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But Wilson is not
\nthe only rural community that is seeing dividends from investing in rural
\nentrepreneurs. Over the next few weeks, a trio of events will shine a spotlight
\non rural momentum in North Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u25cf\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nOctober 27, RIoT Pitch Night<\/a> in Pittsboro showcases
\nstartups from across the Sandhills, a region rich in talent and ideas but often
\noverlooked by investors focused on downtown zip codes. <\/p>\n

\u25cf\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nNovember 13, The Sandhills
\nEntrepreneur Summit<\/a> in Pinehurst brings together founders, ecosystem
\npartners, and small-business champions from Moore County and beyond. <\/p>\n

\u25cf\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nNovember 17\u201318, NC IDEA\u2019s
\nEcosystem Summit<\/a> unites leaders from across North Carolina during
\nGlobal Entrepreneurship Week, this year with a strong emphasis on rural
\nentrepreneurship and community collaboration.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tTech innovation as economic growth strategy\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the past few
\nweeks, I\u2019ve written about innovation as a civic responsibility<\/a>. Supporting
\nentrepreneurs isn\u2019t just something for policymakers or investors. It\u2019s
\nsomething communities do together.
\nThat idea extends far beyond city centers. If you believe innovation is a civic
\nduty, that duty doesn\u2019t stop at the city line.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In practice, it
\nmeans showing up for local pitch events, mentoring founders in small towns and
\nrecognizing that the next big idea might not come from downtown Raleigh or
\nCharlotte. It might come from Sanford. Or Rocky Mount. Or Pittsboro. Rural
\nentrepreneurship isn\u2019t a charity project. It\u2019s a growth strategy. \u00a0<\/p>\n

You need to look no
\nfurther than the revitalization of downtown Wilson to see how quickly investing
\nin your local community creates results. Pittsboro has seen similar private
\nsector investment. Places that make startups and small businesses a priority, gain
\nboth economic growth AND tighter woven communities. Plus, it naturally creates
\na portfolio strategy for economic health. With the natural ebbs and flows of
\nmarkets, every year a few companies may struggle, but the balance supports the
\neconomy.<\/p>\n

Rural areas that
\ninstead try to attract a major out-of-town factory or distribution center to
\nmove into the area put all their economic hopes on a single entity. And that
\nentity\u2019s decision makers, the C-suite and executives, have no connection to
\nthat local economy. When times are hard, they preserve their headquarters and
\ndownsize that satellite facility. Much better to invest in growing your own
\nheadquarters than to focus on being the step-child facility from somewhere
\nelse.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThe long tail of innovation\u00a0<\/p>\n

RIoT has spent the
\npast year investing in the Sandhills region, helping entrepreneurs turn ideas
\ninto prototypes and prototypes into revenue. Pittsboro and its surrounding
\ncounties are just 30-90 minutes from the Triangle, but the Sandhills might as
\nwell be a world away in terms of visibility and resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the \u201clong
\ntail\u201d of innovation where small communities produce ideas that, with the right
\nsupport, scale statewide or nationally. And increasingly, these ideas are tied
\nto AIoT, the intersection of artificial intelligence and connected devices. Rural
\nareas are natural laboratories for AIoT. Farms, energy grids, logistics hubs and local governments generate huge amounts of operational data that can drive
\nsmarter, more sustainable decisions. And it can be far simpler to pilot a
\nsolution in a small town, where you can form personal relationships at the top
\nof government and local business collaborators, avoiding layers of
\norganizational and procedural red tape.<\/p>\n

The data economy
\nthrives on diversity of data \u2014 and rural regions have some of the richest
\ndatasets in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tNC IDEA Ecosystem
\nSummit: A statewide innovation bridge<\/p>\n

Next month\u2019s NC IDEA Ecosystem Summit<\/a> will bring
\ntogether hundreds of ecosystem leaders, many of whom are working to close the
\nrural-urban gap in entrepreneurship. This year\u2019s agenda puts rural innovation
\nfront and center, emphasizing collaboration across communities instead of
\ncompetition between them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keynote speaker Andrew Yang will share insights from
\nhis new venture Noble Mobile, which
\nchallenges conventional thinking about how technology companies generate value.
\nNoble Mobile, a low-cost MVNO operating on T-Mobile\u2019s infrastructure, rewards
\nusers for using less \u2014 if customers
\nstay below a data threshold, they earn money back into an interest-bearing
\naccount. It\u2019s a clever business model that encourages balance between digital
\nengagement and real life \u2014 an idea that resonates deeply with the intentional,
\ncommunity-driven pace of rural living.<\/p>\n

Rural entrepreneurs
\nembody that same ethos every day \u2014 solving practical problems with creativity,
\nresourcefulness, and a commitment to people as much as profit.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tTechnology-based economic development\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I stated, for
\ndecades, economic development strategies in rural America have focused on
\nrecruiting large employers, often through tax breaks that rarely pay off
\nlong-term. But the smarter play, and the one North Carolina is increasingly
\nembracing, is Technology-Based Economic Development (TBED); investing in local
\nstartups, digital infrastructure and homegrown talent.<\/p>\n

Seed-funding a
\nstartup costs a fraction of what we spend on industrial recruitment. Consider
\nthat paving a single mile of rural highway runs $2 million to $3 million. Alternatively, that tax
\ndollar equivalent spent into an annual accelerator program and wraparound
\nentrepreneurial services and startup grants can be less than the cost of a quarter mile. It
\nis not a huge financial investment. Plus that ownership builds ownership, not
\ndependency. Pair that with bi-directional broadband and forward-thinking local
\npolicy, and you\u2019ve got the foundation for the next generation of high-wage,
\nhigh-tech jobs right where people already live.<\/p>\n

Rural towns that
\nmake this small investment into tech entrepreneurship can thrive. And I\u2019ll
\ndouble down on the importance of tech. High quality places to live will always
\nbe places with arts and entertainment, with restaurants and retail. But it is
\nhigh wage jobs that circulate disposable income through an economy to support
\nthose traditionally lower wage industries. Every economy needs high wage jobs.
\nRural economies that don\u2019t invest risk being part of a digital rust belt,
\ncontinuing to fall further behind in the data economy.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThe long tail as a map, not a metaphor<\/p>\n

The long tail of
\nentrepreneurship isn\u2019t just a statistical term. It is a new map of economic
\nopportunity. Tech entrepreneurship no longer requires urban density, and rural
\neconomies are no longer limited by access to freight rail or trucking
\ncorridors. Broadband has made it possible to bring global talent together,
\nwhile quality of life and community support now determine where the companies
\nof the future will take root.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If we want a
\nresilient data economy, we have to build it everywhere. One startup pitch. One
\ncivic act. And one small-town success story at a time. Please come say hello if you attend any of the rural entrepreneurship events listed above. I\u2019d love
\nto hear from you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than an hour outside downtown Raleigh, the landscape shifts from glass towers to pine forests. The traffic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137,32117,2927,113837,113836],"class_list":{"0":"post-241971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-innovations","13":"tag-startups","14":"tag-urban-rural-divide","15":"tag-wral-techwire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}