Technology Archives - SOVA Innovation Hub

RISE and RAMP Launch RAMP Up Program to Help Agricultural, Forestry, and Rural Innovators Reach the Marketplace

SOVA Innovation Hub — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:01:29 +0000

RISE and RAMP Launch Program to Help Agricultural, Forestry, and Rural Innovators Reach the Marketplace

New RAMP Up accelerator program will help innovators turn ideas into products, businesses, and real-world solutions

SOUTH BOSTON, VA – July 9, 2026 – RISE (Regional Investment in Startups and Entrepreneurs) and RAMP (Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program) today announced RAMP Up, a new commercialization accelerator program for agricultural, forestry, and rural innovators in Southern Virginia. The program is funded by the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission and VIPC (Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation), and combines RISE’s regional network, an initiative of the SOVA Innovation Hub, with RAMP’s decade of commercialization experience through the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance (RBIA).

The program welcomes startups, existing businesses, researchers, and innovators working in agriculture, forestry, food systems, animal sciences, natural resources, advanced manufacturing, automation, sustainability, rural technology, and related industries.

Over eight weeks, participants will work with experienced entrepreneurs, researchers, and industry experts to validate customer needs, evaluate market opportunities, refine business models, and develop commercialization strategies. There is no cost to participate in RAMP Up.

Each team that successfully completes the program will be eligible for grants up to $10,000 to support commercialization activities such as product development, pilot projects, customer validation, or other approved business growth expenses. These are non-dilutive grants, meaning that the company does not give up any ownership in exchange for this funding.

Graduates will also be connected to additional entrepreneurship and accelerator opportunities through RAMP, RISE, and other regional partners based on their stage of growth.

Program sessions will be hosted on eight consecutive Mondays, 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM, September 21 through November 9, with seven in-person sessions at the SOVA Innovation Hub in South Boston, Virginia and one virtual session.

Applicants must be existing Virginia businesses or committed to establishing business operations in Virginia. To be eligible, businesses must be located in one of the following localities:

Cities: Covington, Danville, Emporia, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Radford, Roanoke, and Salem
Counties: Alleghany, Amelia, Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Botetourt, Brunswick, Buckingham, Campbell, Charlotte, Craig, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Greensville, Halifax, Henry, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Nottoway, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Prince Edward, Pulaski, Roanoke, and Sussex.

Businesses located within incorporated towns in these eligible counties are also welcome to apply.

This partnership will help more innovators move from concept to company while strengthening Southern Virginia’s innovation economy.

“Southern Virginia has a long history of innovation rooted in agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, and rural enterprise,” said Lauren Mathena, Director of Economic Development and Community Engagement for the SOVA Innovation Hub and Program Director for RISE. “Through this partnership with RAMP, we are creating new opportunities for innovators to connect with experts, test ideas, and explore pathways to bring new products and solutions to market. We want to help great ideas become businesses, jobs, and economic opportunities for our region.”

“Many innovations never reach the marketplace because innovators lack access to commercialization support,” said Chip Bobbert, Director of Innovation at the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance, the entity that operates RAMP. “RAMP Up is designed to bridge that gap by helping innovators understand customers, markets, partnerships, and commercialization pathways before they enter a full accelerator program.”

RISE and RAMP thank the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, VIPC, and regional partners for their continued support of entrepreneurship and innovation across Southern Virginia.

Applications for the inaugural Fall 2026 cohort are open now with a deadline of September 3, 2026.

For more information and to apply, visit: https://sovarise.com/ramp-up

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Media Contacts

RAMP and RBIA: Ada Cuadrado-Medina, ada.cuadrado-medina@rbtc.tech
RISE and SOVA Innovation Hub: Liz Smith, liz.smith@sovainnovationhub.com

About RISE

RISE (Regional Investment in Startups and Entrepreneurs) is a regional entrepreneurship initiative serving Southern Virginia and Franklin County. Managed by the SOVA Innovation Hub in partnership with Longwood’s Small Business Development Center and regional ecosystem partners, RISE helps entrepreneurs connect with resources, training, mentors, and opportunities to start and grow businesses.

About RAMP

RAMP (Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program), operated by the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance (RBIA), helps entrepreneurs launch and grow innovative companies through mentorship, commercialization support, accelerator programming, and connections to customers, investors, and industry partners.

The post RISE and RAMP Launch RAMP Up Program to Help Agricultural, Forestry, and Rural Innovators Reach the Marketplace appeared first on SOVA Innovation Hub.

How Southern Virginia Organizations Are Using AI to Solve Real Business Challenges

SOVA Innovation Hub — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:08:00 +0000

Nine organizations completed the inaugural gener8tor Skills AI for Leaders cohort, exploring practical applications of artificial intelligence to improve operations, strengthen workforce development, and solve everyday business challenges.

Artificial intelligence, or “AI”, often dominates headlines, but for organizations across Southern Virginia, the most important question is not what AI might do someday. It is what AI can do today.

This spring, leaders from nine Southern Virginia companies participated in the inaugural gener8tor Skills AI for Leaders cohort, a six-week program designed to help employers identify practical opportunities to apply artificial intelligence within their operations. Supported by Microsoft and the SOVA Innovation Hub, the virtual cohort brought together participants from Southern Virginia alongside peers from Wisconsin and Minnesota to explore real-world applications of AI across manufacturing, logistics, operations, workforce development, and business services.

On June 2, Southern Virginia participants gathered at the SOVA Innovation Hub for an in-person networking event, certificate presentation, and showcase of projects developed during the cohort. Participants shared lessons learned, discussed implementation strategies, and celebrated the completion of the program.

Participating Companies

Participating Southern Virginia organizations included AJ Transport, Beyond Freight LLC, Dedon & Gloster Furniture, Dollar General, Genesis Products, Huber Engineered Woods, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), Morgan Lumber Co., and Reynolds Consumer Products (Presto Products Company). Four organizations presented AI use cases developed during the cohort, while all participants engaged in hands-on learning, peer collaboration, and exploration of practical AI applications within their operations.

The AI use case projects varied widely, but a common lesson emerged: Successful AI adoption is not about replacing people. It is about helping employees solve problems faster, make better decisions, preserve valuable knowledge, and work more effectively.

The goal of gener8tor Skills AI for Leaders is not simply to teach organizations about artificial intelligence. It is to help them identify practical opportunities to create value within their operations. What stood out about this cohort was the focus on solving real business challenges, from quality control and workforce training to logistics and knowledge management. These projects show that organizations do not need to start with large-scale transformation. They can begin with a specific challenge and build from there.

Danielle Remmick

Program Manager for gener8tor Skills

One of the most exciting outcomes of this cohort was seeing participants move beyond talking about AI and begin applying it to real business challenges. The projects presented were not theoretical. They focused on improving quality, preserving institutional knowledge, streamlining operations, and supporting employees in their day-to-day work. That is exactly the type of practical innovation we want to see happening across Southern Virginia.

Lauren Mathena

Director of Economic Development & Community Engagement for the SOVA Innovation Hub

AI Use Cases

Four participating organizations presented projects focused on quality control, workforce training, logistics, and knowledge management. Together, they demonstrated how organizations can begin using AI to address practical business challenges without large technology teams or significant technology investments.

Huber Engineered Woods: Predicting Quality Issues Before They Become Problems

The project presented by Huber Engineered Woods focused on a challenge familiar to many industrial operations: identifying quality issues before they lead to defects, waste, or production disruptions.

Using historical production data, the team developed a machine learning model designed to recognize patterns associated with successful and unsuccessful production outcomes. The project combines historical production data, supervised learning, and AI-assisted recommendations to help identify root causes of quality issues and flag when processes may be trending toward undesirable outcomes.

The team emphasized that data quality is just as important as model quality.

“Just because it’s data doesn’t mean it’s good data,” one presenter explained, noting the importance of filtering out downtime events, outages, and unusual operating conditions that could distort results.

The project also reinforced an important principle shared throughout the cohort. AI should support human expertise, not replace it. While the model provides recommendations and early warnings, operators remain responsible for evaluating the information and making final decisions.

For the organization, the biggest immediate benefit is speed. Analyses that once required days of manual effort can now be completed in near real time, allowing teams to respond faster and make more informed decisions.

The project has progressed beyond experimentation and is preparing for controlled production testing to evaluate prediction accuracy, operator adoption, and overall performance.

Reynolds Consumer Products: Modernizing Training and Capturing Operational Knowledge

The team from Reynolds Consumer Products’ South Boston facility explored how AI could help address one of the most time-consuming challenges in manufacturing: creating and maintaining training documentation.

Developing a single standard work document often requires dozens of hours spread over several weeks as trainers, supervisors, process specialists, and operators collaborate to document procedures. By the time documentation is complete, equipment changes or process improvements may already require revisions.

The result is often a gap between documented procedures and actual operations.

The team’s AI use case focused on accelerating the creation and maintenance of standard work documents while capturing valuable institutional knowledge held by experienced employees.

Their goal is to reduce documentation bottlenecks, improve onboarding, strengthen training consistency, and preserve expertise that might otherwise be lost through workforce transitions.

For many manufacturers facing retirements and workforce challenges, ensuring that critical knowledge remains accessible may prove just as valuable as improving operational efficiency.

Dedon & Gloster Furniture: Turning Five Freight Tools into One

Representatives from Dedon and Gloster, two outdoor furniture brands operating under one umbrella, tackled a challenge that affected both employees and customers: freight calculations.

As the organizations became more integrated, freight quotes continued to be generated through multiple tools, by numerous employees, across two brands. The result was inconsistent information, internal inefficiencies, and delays in responding to customer requests.

One example highlighted the challenge. A sales representative on the West Coast might be working to close a significant order after the East Coast freight team had already left for the day. Without access to reliable freight calculations, the sale would have to wait.

To address the issue, the team used ChatGPT as a collaborative design partner, consolidating freight maps, spreadsheets, and standard operating procedures into a single freight calculator.

“I used ChatGPT like a business partner,” one team member shared. “We went back and forth 39 times before we had a version that actually worked.”

The resulting tool standardizes freight logic across brands, simplifies the user experience, and provides faster, more consistent quotes regardless of time zone.

The project also underscored an important lesson about AI implementation.

“Garbage in, garbage out. You have to test it, validate it, and make sure what you’re getting out is accurate.”

The team plans to seek executive approval and begin implementation across customer service, sales, and warehouse operations.

Morgan Lumber: Preserving Knowledge Before It Walks Out the Door

For Morgan Lumber Group, a deck board manufacturer in Charlotte County, the challenge was knowledge management.

Critical operational knowledge existed in multiple places: vendor emails, maintenance records, manuals, blueprints, and the memories of employees with decades of experience.

“Every time we lose an employee, we lose a lot,” one presenter explained. “Once they retire, everything they know is gone.”

The company is developing a secure, internally hosted knowledge system that will allow employees to quickly search vendor communications, manuals, operating procedures, maintenance history, and troubleshooting records.

Instead of spending valuable time searching through binders, inboxes, and disconnected files, technicians would be able to ask simple questions such as, “Have we seen this fault before?” or “What fixed this issue last year?” and quickly locate relevant information.

One example demonstrated the potential impact. A recurring equipment fault that previously required 45 minutes of investigation could eventually surface related emails, manual pages, maintenance photos, and prior solutions in seconds.

The project will be implemented in phases, beginning with vendor communications and service records before expanding to manuals, blueprints, standard operating procedures, and institutional knowledge capture.

The team stressed that ease of use will determine success.

“Whatever we do, it has to be simple and easy to use. If they have to click through a bunch of screens and still can’t find what they need, they’ll stop using it.”

While the projects addressed different business challenges, several themes emerged throughout the cohort.

First, successful AI initiatives begin with clearly defined operational problems rather than technology itself.

Second, security and governance matter. Participants emphasized the importance of working within organizational policies and leveraging secure platforms that align with existing cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance requirements.

Third, AI is proving to be a powerful tool for preserving institutional knowledge. Across multiple projects, participants identified the loss of experienced employees and undocumented expertise as one of the most significant risks facing organizations today.

Finally, every team viewed AI as a tool that enhances human decision-making rather than replacing it. The most successful applications focused on helping employees work more efficiently, access information more quickly, and make better-informed decisions.

One participant reflected on the importance of continuing to learn and adapt:

“I hope I never get so old that I stop learning. I’m not the future of the company, but I have to map out a succession plan. I’m going to use AI to help me overcome some of my weaknesses and develop training plans, so when I do retire, that knowledge isn’t lost.”

While each organization entered the program with different goals and challenges, all demonstrated a commitment to exploring how emerging technologies can strengthen operations, support employees, and create value within their organizations. The cohort provided a unique opportunity for participants to learn from one another, share ideas across industries, and begin building a regional community of practice around artificial intelligence and innovation.

Building Southern Virginia’s AI Capacity

The first gener8tor Skills AI for Leaders cohort demonstrated that organizations do not need large technology budgets or dedicated data science teams to begin exploring AI.

The most promising opportunities often start with practical business challenges:

- Improving quality and reducing defects
- Preserving institutional knowledge
- Streamlining training and onboarding
- Simplifying complex operational decisions
- Improving customer service and responsiveness

Artificial intelligence presents tremendous opportunities for organizations of all sizes, but success starts with access, education, and hands-on experience. Through collaborations like this one with the SOVA Innovation Hub and gener8tor, we are helping employers explore practical applications of AI that can strengthen operations, support their workforce, and position them for future growth.

Jeremy Satterfield

TechSpark Virginia Manager, Microsoft

What stands out about these projects is that they began with real business needs. Whether improving operational efficiency, preserving decades of institutional knowledge, or helping employees access information more quickly, these organizations are demonstrating how AI can create meaningful value today. We are proud to support efforts that help build innovation capacity across Southern Virginia.

Kristin Vaughan

Senior Community Affairs Manager, Microsoft

What’s Next for AI Training in Southern Virginia?

The SOVA Innovation Hub will continue working with Microsoft, gener8tor, employers, educators, and other regional partners to build Southern Virginia’s capacity for practical, human-centered AI adoption.

Beginning in early fall 2026, the SOVA Innovation Hub will launch additional opportunities for businesses, nonprofits, educators, students, local governments, and community members to engage with artificial intelligence through the SOVA AI Connect Workshop Series and the AI Civic Innovation Challenge.

These initiatives will provide hands-on learning opportunities, practical use cases, collaborative problem-solving experiences, and pathways for organizations to explore how AI can be used responsibly to address business and community challenges.

To stay informed about future AI workshops, cohorts, innovation challenges, and other technology-focused opportunities, follow the SOVA Innovation Hub on social media, subscribe to the Hub newsletter, or visit sovainnovationhub.com/ai-programs >

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Introducing SOVA AI Connect

SOVA Innovation Hub — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:30:00 +0000

Building Southern Virginia’s Future Through Community-Driven AI Innovation

The SOVA Innovation Hub is proud to announce that it has been awarded an OpenAI Foundation People-First AI Grant. The SOVA Innovation Hub was one of 208 nonprofits nationwide, and one of only four in Virginia, chosen from more than 3,000 applicants. This award underscores both the strength of Southern Virginia’s innovation-driven vision and the meaningful work already underway to advance that vision.

With this support, the SOVA Innovation Hub will launch SOVA AI Connect in 2026. This new community-based initiative will be designed by and for Southern Virginians anchored at the SOVA Innovation Hub. SOVA AI Connect aligns with the mission of the SOVA innovation Hub to spark economic transformation in Southern Virginia.

SOVA AI Connect will help people build AI literacy, confidence, and practical skills through hands-on workshops and demonstrations, civic innovation challenges, and workforce training. The initiative will help people apply AI responsibly and creatively to strengthen local industries, improve services, and solve community challenges. This project will deepen the SOVA Innovation Hub’s ability to support community innovation and workforce development.

The SOVA Innovation Hub was created in a partnership between Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC) and Microsoft TechSpark to inspire people to pursue entrepreneurship and develop digital skills. Through coworking, hands-on training, signature programs like RISE, EXCITE, and EVOLVE, and regional community outreach, the SOVA Innovation Hub brings together entrepreneurs, educators, students, and non-profit leaders to learn, collaborate, and grow.

MBC has spent over two decades expanding broadband infrastructure and economic opportunity across Southern Virginia. Through the SOVA Innovation Hub, MBC supports programs that build digital skills, support entrepreneurship, and ensure that rural communities have access to the tools they need to thrive in a modern economy.

“MBC invests in the SOVA Innovation Hub because we believe every community in Southern Virginia deserves the chance to participate fully in the digital economy,” said Tad Deriso, President & CEO, Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation. “This recognition from the OpenAI Foundation affirms the impact of that work and the potential of the people who call this region home. SOVA AI Connect will help residents build trust, skills, and confidence with AI—ensuring that emerging technology benefits our farms, schools, small businesses, and nonprofits in practical, meaningful ways.”

We look forward to launching SOVA AI Connect in partnership with the OpenAI Foundation and continuing to expand innovation capacity across Southern Virginia.

To receive updates and announcements about SOVA AI Connect, please join the SOVA Innovation Hub newsletter and follow the SOVA Innovation Hub on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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