Finding Your Voice

Post by: Wayne Hall, Autography

Three years ago in a fit of exquisite timing I left a full time job with some pretty sweet benefits to start my own business, Autography, a creative media firm.

When I started my business, the IdeaFestival was my first client. This year, I’ve been asked by the Innovation Network to put to use what I’ve learned interviewing innovators to write about the importance of curiosity in the commonwealth. I’m looking forward it.

Forbes’ Steve Denning wrote in the the magazine’s online forum that virtually all job growth in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old. Locally, the commonwealth is home to a small but growing industry focused on micro-gravity research and the development of small spacecraft with sophisticated science payloads. Morehead State University figures prominently in this growth. The university went so far as to lure the creator of a worldwide standard for small spacecraft, Bob Twiggs, from his post at Stanford to MSU. It’s not the kind of move we often hear about in Kentucky. Prof. Twiggs, who wrote the book on pico-satellites, believed that spaceflight was for everyone. Today, he’s writing a new chapter in that book. He’s teaching a new generation of kids how to think outside the atmosphere.

As it turns out, astro-engineering talent can be mined in eastern Kentucky too.

So is innovation important? Of course! For 2015, I hope to highlight those kinds of innovative stories in the commonwealth in a series of articles and videos with job – and wealth – creators, right here in Kentucky.

Change happens whether we want it to or not. I know from personal experience that getting ahead of the challenge is the best way to meet it.