Virginia’s Innovation Moment: Five Actions to Sustain the Boom

When global pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca announced multibillion-dollar manufacturing facilities in Virginia this fall, it marked more than just a pair of headline-grabbing investments. It signaled a broader entrepreneurial renaissance taking hold across the Commonwealth.

Between 2023 and 2024 alone, more than 10,000 new high-growth, high-wage startups were launched across the state. Ranked #1 for business by CNBC in 2024, Virginia is rapidly emerging as a serious contender in America’s innovation economy — positioning itself alongside Silicon Valley as a national hub for technology, life sciences and advanced manufacturing.

But sustaining this momentum will require coordinated investment from all corners of the innovation ecosystem, including Virginia’s universities, which are uniquely positioned to serve as incubators for ideas, technologies and talent.

“Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems are often anchored by world-class research universities,” says Michael Lenox, the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business at UVA Darden, who oversees the universitywide initiative UVA Innovates. “We are fortunate to have several universities in the Commonwealth that are contributing to economic growth and job creation by catalyzing technologies, talent, and businesses.”

The Jefferson Innovation Summit: Charting a Path Forward

Earlier this year, the University of Virginia (UVA) convened a delegation of entrepreneurs, investors, state officials, university leaders, and nonprofit and corporate partners at the 2025 Jefferson Innovation Summit.

Hosted by UVA Innovates and UVA Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, in collaboration with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC) and the Tom Tom Foundation, the summit tackled a key question: How can Virginia’s universities help catalyze a truly unified, statewide innovation ecosystem?

Over a day of dialogue and brainstorming, the delegates identified five key actions to transform Virginia into a connected innovation network that delivers entrepreneurial opportunity across the Commonwealth. Their insights are detailed in a new policy playbook, available here.

Top Five Recommendations

1. Create a Statewide Entrepreneurship Education Platform

The future of innovation in Virginia relies heavily on entrepreneurship education. In an unpredictable and rapidly changing world, it is crucial to teach entrepreneurial thinking from an early age — not only through business programs but also across all levels of education, from elementary schools to college campuses. In fact, research conducted by Darden Professor Saras Sarasvathy and her co-authors indicates that students in Denmark who received entrepreneurship training in high school were 40% more likely to start revenue-generating ventures after graduation.

Recommendation: Develop a Statewide Entrepreneurship Education Platform that provides modern, practical, and accessible curricula tailored for every educational level.

2. Establish a Virginia Entrepreneurship Network of Universities

While Virginia’s universities consistently rank among the top 100 patent-producing academic institutions, their entrepreneurship programs often operate in silos. This fragmentation limits collaboration and makes it harder for founders to access the resources needed to grow — and stay — in Virginia.

Recommendation: Create a Virginia Entrepreneurship Network of Universities to coordinate statewide efforts, share best practices, and build bridges to other innovation networks such as the Virginia Accelerator Network (VAN), a consortium of nonprofit ESOs that support early-stage, innovation-driven startups.

3. Build Industry-Specific Resource Databases

Every entrepreneur needs access to the right connections, funding sources, and expertise. However, finding them can be a challenge. While Virginia offers numerous programs to educate and support founders, the information is scattered.

Recommendation: Develop targeted, industry-specific databases aligned with the state’s strategic technology priorities, as outlined in the Commonwealth Research and Technology Strategic Roadmap. These databases should connect investors, founders and skilled workers efficiently and transparently.

4. Create a Commonwealth Entrepreneur Corps

Virginia's innovation growth has varied significantly across the Commonwealth. Regions such as Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Charlottesville are thriving due to investments in artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In contrast, areas like Southwest and Southside Virginia continue to face economic challenges resulting from the decline of the coal and tobacco industries.

Recommendation: Create a Commonwealth Entrepreneur Corps to place university students and recent graduates in under-resourced communities. Through internships and field-based programs, the corps would help build entrepreneurial capacity and spark local innovation.

5. Develop a Virginia Ecosystem Metrics Scorecard

Many of Virginia’s entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) depend on state-funded grants, such as VIPC’s Regional Innovation Fund (RIF) and GO Virginia. Yet existing performance metrics are often inconsistent, duplicative, or fail to predict long-term impact.

Recommendation: Convene a cross-sector task force — including ESOs, universities and Commonwealth officials — to design a Virginia Ecosystem Metrics Scorecard (VEMS) that establishes clear, consistent and transparent criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs statewide.

A Connected Future

The five recommendations present a vision for Virginia as a connected innovation ecosystem. Instead of relying exclusively on established hubs to promote economic growth, the delegates of the Jefferson Innovation Summit recognize that innovation can arise anywhere, as long as the appropriate support systems are in place.

Explore the full policy playbook here.