INNOVATE® Nashville

Founded in Nashville in 1890 by Susan Heron and Ida B. Hood–two female school teachers–Belmont University has been defying conventional expectations of higher education and serving as an incubator of innovation ever since. Today, the University is comprised of nearly 9,000 students from every U.S. state and 33 countries. Nationally...

People used to wonder whether blockchain technology would survive. Then the question transitioned to “It’s not a matter of if, but when it will take hold?” Now the key question being asked is “who is using it and how?” To answer that question, you must understand that Web2 and Web3...

What exactly is innovation? It’s more than a brand new way of thinking, though that is definitely a key part of the equation. Genuine innovation also must have a practical application; that is, be impactfully useful. Sometimes the combination of novel idea and usefulness reach the summit and forge a...

You know when you shop for clothes online, but you don’t know which size to buy or if an item will look good on your body? Couture Technologies helps apparel brands solve this massive financial and sustainability challenge by seamlessly integrating its patent-pending virtual try on technology with a brand’s...

Emids was founded in 1999 and has grown to be the proven leader in digital engineering and transformation innovations to the healthcare and life sciences industry. The company’s evolution has been expertly navigated by Saurabh Sinha, Emids CEO and co founder. And while Emids has experienced tremendous success, its accomplishments...

The Wond’ry, Vanderbilt University’s center for innovation, serves as a catalyst for efforts to build and strengthen innovation capacity in the region. The Wond’ry provides space, mentorship, programming and other resources designed to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration among students, faculty, staff, and alumni from across all parts of Vanderbilt and from...

In 2011, VendEngine started as a simple concept — digitizing financial transactions for law enforcement, jails and prisons while providing easy, safe, and secure methods to transmit money between family members and inmates. Once the company got going however, this simple concept, something that had been done in nearly every...

In March 1996, Casey Mayfield interviewed with a small biometrics company in Springfield, IL in a stylish business suit she’d purchased for $25 at a secondhand store. She met the owners, was fascinated with the technology, and signed on to be a Fingerprint Technician. She soon met Erik Wolle, who...

It’s not often you hear about companies that thrive for over a century, but FirstBank, from its humble start in rural West Tennessee in 1906 continues to evolve and conquer 117 years later. From its original mission of serving a small-town farming community, FirstBank, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee with a...

Current methods of managing healthcare are unsustainable, with chronic disease treatment alone putting a $4 trillion annual strain on the U.S. economy. Healthcare professionals across the board agree that earlier diagnosis, better preventative care, and improved disease management will significantly reduce those costs while improving the lives of millions of...

According to Chad Marcum, VideoBomb’s Founder and CEO, “Our mission is to make augmented reality available to businesses of all sizes. AR is the next big thing in customer engagement, and it should not be limited to only the big brands with big budgets. We’ve made it easy and affordable...

THE QUESTIONHave you ever had to throw your best work away? I have. It’s demoralizing, but sometimes things you can’t control go wrong and there’s nothing to do but let it go. You can start to think, “why bother?” I’ve seen it happen to our clients too. As a device...

Tech-enabled companies and enterprises save 30-50% of their Cloud development and modernization cost and time with BOS. After building over 200 software products across industries spanning Clinical Research, HealthCare, Finance, Departments of Corrections, Defense, and Education in multiple geographies including North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, BOS CEO and Founder...

A bank for creators…A Studio is a place where creators do their thing. Studio Bank exists to empower creators. Whether you’re designing a company or creating a better life for your family, crafting a song or writing code, orchestrating social change or enhancing the quality of care, we launched Studio...

Small businesses make up 99.9% of all companies in the United States. Within a year, 20% of new small businesses fail. That number rises to 30% before the end of the second year. After five years, half of those small businesses have failed. Profits only start trickling in after 18...

Software should solve problems, not create them. However, the process of developing software has its own set of bugs. In 2021, 48-percent of software development projects ran over budget and a third over time, according to a Deloitte study. These project pitfalls stem from a lack of transparency and proper...

Revitalizing a 25-year-old software company is no small task, but can be a pathway towards innovation and compelling value creation for employees, customers, and investors. That’s the story of Mindful, a contact center software company that relocated to Nashville in 2018, which was acquired by Medallia in 2022 after an...

“The leader of this team has been skeptical all day, they’re pretty much afraid of him and they do whatever he says. Oh, and before this job he was a prison warden for almost twenty years.” That was the last thing my liaison said to me before she introduced me...

Foresight is elevating the sales profession by arming reps with their buyer’s unique needs and pain points so they can have more effective meetings. In the information age, buyers want consultants (not sales reps) to guide them through the process. We make that vision a reality. Freshly baked sourdough and heirloom...

The genesis of EvidenceCare came one night while Dr. Brian Fengler was working in the emergency room of Saint Thomas Midtown Hospital in Nashville, and a young woman presented with extreme shortness of breath and fast heart rate. She had a massive blood clot between her heart and lungs. She...

When we started our Nashville-based technology consulting firm Atiba all the way back in 1992, the tech services world was relatively simple. When a business needed tech help, they simply opened The Yellow Pages and looked under “Computer Consultants” to hire any one of the dozen or so Nashville IT...

Nxt Level understands that companies struggle with finding and hiring the right team members to create growth. Our recruiting company views things differently. Our goal is to replace the mountain of resumes with a short list of the right people aligned with your job requirements, culture, and values. The entrepreneurial...

The Vanderbilt Vaccine Center (VVC) was founded in 2004, with James E. Crowe, Jr, M.D. as director. The mission of this internationally recognized biomedical research and development team is to transform infectious disease prevention approaches using instant immunity achieved by use of naturally occurring molecules form the human immune system...