NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- Nashville has been named to a short list of leading southeastern technology innovation hubs.
The report, compiled by Atlanta based investment firm BIP Capital, also includes Atlanta, Miami, Northern Virginia and the Raleigh-Durham Research Park.
The study pays special tribute to two Tennessee innovation investment initiatives for driving the trend. The first is a state program called TNInvestco. The second is a private-public partnership called Launch Tennessee.
Mark Buffington is CEO at BIP Capital.
“I gotta tell yah, as a free-marketer, it always scares me when governments get involved in things, but I can’t deny the data and the kind of pin action or the multiplier effect that some of the funds had.”
Buffington goes on to say that while these public-private partnerships helped Nashville leap ahead of the competition in recent years, there are other factors at work.
He notes, for instance, that the concentration of hospital companies located in Middle Tennessee, along with the launch of Obamacare, combined to attract an unusual number of health industry entrepreneurs to the region.
“Essentially a kind of national kind of focus on making health care more cost effective and also improving the quality of health care”
But BIP Capital cautions in its report that Tennessee seems to be investing less in recent years and argues that could mean losing its reputation as a leading tech hub.
Not everyone agrees.
Dr. Murat Arik at the Business and Economic Research Centerat Middle Tennessee State tells WMOT that, while there may be slightly less recent investment, he believes the amounts of money being poured into new local ventures is both “healthy and sustainable.”
Would you like to review the complete report from BIP Capital?