I recently attended the Growth & Innovation Leaders Forum at The EDGE Incubator and Accelerator in Alabama. The event brought together people from universities, established companies, and startups for a full day of conversation around how organizations are approaching AI, building partnerships, and supporting entrepreneurs.
I went in expecting a good program. I came away with new connections and a sharper sense of where ecosystem work fits into what these institutions and businesses are already doing.
How the Day Opened
Dean Kay Palan of the Culverhouse College of Business and Dr. Theresa Welbourne, Executive Director of the Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute, welcomed attendees and grounded the day in organizational leadership during periods of change. Edward K. Aldag Jr., Chairman of Medical Properties Trust, and Greg Byrne, Director of Athletics at Alabama, followed with sessions on trust-building in the medical and athletic sectors, two environments where leadership decisions carry serious weight.
AI in Practice
Several sessions focused on how organizations are putting AI to work right now.
- Bobby Napolitano, Chairman of LearnAIR, and Jonathan Richardson, Head of Data and AI at City Detect, talked through data readiness for AI adoption, with particular attention to city-level applications. A lot of what they described, organizing messy data, building systems that different teams can use together, maps directly to the challenges we hear from economic development leaders working with EcoMap.
- Barbara Gress, Senior Director at Salesforce, joined student presenters Anthony Laughlin and Christopher Moehlenpah to walk through how retail and sales teams can evaluate and adopt AI tools. Naren Patel, Founder and CEO of StartupWind, shared how he’s combining AI with personal storytelling in content marketing, drawing from his time at TriNet and Kellogg.
- Dustin Dew from Protective Life presented with student presenters Isaac Bean and Theodore Fernandez on how insurance companies can reach college-aged audiences through targeted products. Watching a legacy industry rethink its audience that way was a good reminder that the pressure to adapt is showing up everywhere.
Universities and Venture Builders
Steve Hayton, Chief Experience Officer at Global Venture Network, led a session on partnerships between universities and venture builders. He explored how academic institutions and investors can collaborate more effectively to support new companies. At EcoMap, we see this play out regularly. Universities are often sitting on enormous amounts of entrepreneurial energy and research talent, and the regions that build connective infrastructure around those assets tend to see stronger outcomes.
Tributary Innovation Center
The day before the forum, I visited the Tributary Innovation Center in Birmingham’s Highway 280 corridor. Josh Watkins gave me a tour and shared their plans for the space.
Tributary will span over 400,000 square feet, making it one of the largest innovation centers in the country. The team is building it to serve entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors across Alabama with flexible workspaces, programming, and support services. The setting itself is striking, surrounded by trees and a lake that makes it feel different from a typical office park.
I spent over three hours there. Josh is focused on cross-industry programming and continuous learning, and they’re thinking carefully about how to make the center a place where different kinds of companies and founders can work alongside each other.
A space like that, paired with digital tools to manage relationships, track engagement, and surface opportunities, could accelerate what Alabama’s innovation community is building.
People and Conversations Worth Noting
I was glad to spend time with Dr. Welbourne, whose work at the Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute runs parallel to what we help ecosystems do through EcoMap. She’s exploring how to map the resources available in the region, identify where gaps exist, and improve coordination across organizations. That’s exactly the kind of challenge our platform is built to address.
Across the day, the recurring thread was that AI, data strategy, and cross-sector collaboration are no longer theoretical. Organizations are acting on them. The institutions and regions putting infrastructure in place to support that work are the ones making real progress.