“We must be headlights, not taillights.” — John Lewis
Today’s issue:
September 8, 2020
GAME CHANGERS
Business accelerator focuses on racial equity 
Darrin Redus
The goals for startup founders are clear. Founders need capital and customers to grow their businesses and create jobs. However, minority entrepreneurs frequently feel like outsiders.
Darrin Redus, vice president at Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Cincinnati Minority Business Collaborative (CMBC), is working hard to make diversity and inclusion (D&I) part of everyday business.
Redus believes that Cincinnati business founders can be thought leaders on the subject of anti-racist companies. A 2019 LendingTree report identified Cincinnati in the top 10 of the largest 50 US metropolitan areas where minorities are finding success.
Cincinnati Future spoke with Redus about his vision.
How are diverse and inclusive workspaces crucial for Cincinnati's future entrepreneurial and startup success?
Redus: Continuing to foster and cultivate an environment where diverse entrepreneurs can come together, share ideas, best practices, and resources is foundational to a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. Many ethnically diverse entrepreneurs lack access to critical networks and relationships vital in the pursuit and readiness for early-stage capital and client relationships. Fostering diverse and inclusive workplaces is undoubtedly one way to ensure that these critical connections take place.
What leadership roles around diversity and inclusion can the CMBC provide to current and future business leaders?
Redus: The CMBC creates unique access and pathways to decision-makers at the highest levels of business and government. Whether it's leadership roles with the Minority Business Accelerator itself or leveraging its vast regional and national network to facilitate pathways to leadership for businesses large and small, the Accelerator is a direct conduit to these critical relationships.
What are some of the accomplished goals from the Minority Entrepreneurial Connectivity Assessment (MECA)? What benchmarks from the MECA report remain?
Redus: Some of the early and foundational work of creating an emerging pipeline of minority, tech-based entrepreneurs is well underway and generating strong momentum. Building upon these efforts to ensure that more minority entrepreneurs are securing higher amounts of angel and venture capital and leveraging that capital to attract critical customer relationships to scale their businesses to sizable enterprises is ongoing work that must occur.
Increasing workplace diversity and inclusion is a global challenge. What D&I challenges are unique to the Greater Cincinnati business ecosystem?
Redus: The challenges around workplace diversity and inclusion that are unique to the Cincinnati region center on ensuring that the core industries of this region, specifically advanced manufacturing, bio health, business and professional services, and technology are at optimal levels from a D&I standpoint. As crucial as workplace diversity and inclusion are for all industries across the board, those industries that identify as regional strengths must also reflect the diversity of the region if all citizens are to reap the benefits of a growing and thriving economy.
Click here to learn the stories of the minority businesses in Cincinnati through the Minority Business Building a Business Enterprise Series. Share this story!
An interactive starter kit for new businesses The 2020 P&G Signal Summit was a showcase for breakthrough innovation in marketing tech. It was also a great way for Brian Browning, founder and CEO of StartBlox, an all-in-one startup business platform based at Cintrifuse, to demo his product for startup founders.
StartBlox aims to be comprehensive, providing an editorial archive, educational content, networking tools, resource connections, and a suite of services to help startups launch successfully and grow. Browning is an alum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and founder of the management consultancy Consuleris LLC.
“I’m building an interactive starter kit for new businesses,” Browning told Cincinnati Future. “I want startup founders to experience StartBlox as a one-stop platform providing all the resources they need to be successful.” What’s the competition? Look at LegalZoom and its platform for affordable and accessible legal documents. Share this story!
Covington’s Innovation Alley is living up to its name A one-block alley in Covington, KY—just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati—was officially branded “Innovation Alley” in 2016. And it’s certainly fulfilling its destiny. The district is already home to medical testing firm Gravity Diagnostics, a medical testing firm that processes Covid-19 tests and Bexion Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a drug for brain cancer, and a cluster of early-stage startups.
And that’s not all. Now, Northern Kentucky University is creating NKY-HUB, a “one-stop, shared services, entrepreneurship nerve center” that will call the alley home. According to the City of Covington, some 26 partners have signed on to participate in the NKY-HUB thus far—everything from private-sector leaders to accelerators to educational programs. Share this story!
ON OUR RADAR 
Innovation across the river If you find yourself in Covington's Innovation Alley, make sure to check out these innovators in Northern Kentucky. They're certainly on our innovation radar.
Wait...there is a Cincinnati Innovation Radar? Yes! This rapidly growing database identifies the most innovative local organizations and the people behind them. We will continue to share additions and interesting trends. You can also explore the radar and add your company if it's not already included.
A few highlights from across the river
Click here to learn about other innovators in Covington. Share the Innovation Radar!
Kroger Health offers online course for understanding opioids If you’ve ever tried to read the literature that comes with your prescription meds, you might have needed to double up on your meds to get through it. Kroger Health gets that and has innovated on an idea.
The interactive opioid course is clear, easy to navigate and uses a flashcard metaphor to educate customers about the proper uses—and misuses—of prescription opioids. Five-minute lessons are also available on topics like basic opioid facts, how to read a prescription bottle label, how to understand warnings, drug interactions, side effects, how to store medicine properly, and use prescriptions responsibly. The service is free and available to anyone. Share this story!
SPOTLIGHT
Student’s software help the deaf “see music” A Cincinnati high-school student has invented a software program that helps deaf and hearing-impaired people visualize music. The program, which he calls a Chromatic Music Visualizer, associates the chord values in music with different colors. The idea is to show the emotions in music, so that people who can’t hear can enjoy music and experience it alongside their family and friends.
While we eagerly await an opportunity to plug some Grateful Dead into the Chromatic Music Visualizer and see what colors come out, the invention is no laughing matter: Ziegler won the Technology Award at Ohio Invention League’s Invention Convention and will go on to compete at the national level. Share this story!
KNOW YOUR CITY 
Have you checked your "Cincy-Q" recently?
Click here to see answers.
AROUND THE REGION With 
We hope you enjoy these headlines from the latest issue of Flyover Future, chronicling innovation throughout the Midwest. If you'd like to subscribe to Flyover Future, click here.
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