Virginia Economic Review

The Commonwealth of Virginia has existed as a business venture since its inception in 1607, when the Virginia Company of London formed a joint-stock company to bring profits to shareholders and establish an English colony in the New World.

Virginia’s higher education system, consistently ranked as one of the best in the country, is well established as an elite talent incubator. But the Commonwealth’s universities, both public and private, also serve as a launching pad for startup companies.

Paul's Fan Company in Buchanan County was founded in 1958 as a small machine shop servicing the coal mining industry. It evolved over the years to focus on improved mine ventilation, producing turnkey industrial ventilation solutions for companies.

Tom Walker is the founder and CEO of DroneUp, a provider of drone delivery and flight services that has operated out of Virginia Beach since its founding in 2016.

Medical Device Manufacturer Embody Sets Stage for International Growth For Norfolk-based Embody, Inc., the six-year process of product development, preclinical testing, and compliance hurdles to get its collagen-based tendon and ligament implant, Tapestry, into the U.S.

Partnership With JMU, BRCC Helps Merck Fill Need for HPV Vaccines In 2019, Melissa Lubin learned that pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc., was competing for a billion-dollar expansion in Elkton, a town in the Shenandoah Valley.

The highly transmissible omicron variant of the novel coronavirus upended perceptions about proper mitigation. People who had been wearing fabric masks began switching over to N95 and KN95 respirators, leading to greater demand for respirators.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia Tech's Rob Gourdie was busy investigating how to deliver medications more effectively.

Kimberly Kelly was a biomedical engineer at the University of Virginia (UVA), working on ways to diagnose pancreatic cancer, when she discovered a protein expressed by the cancer cells.

Universities, VA Bio+Tech Park Draw Investment to Richmond For communities seeking to recreate the success of well-known life sciences clusters in Boston, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News suggests there’s a straightforward formula to replicate.

Northern Virginia’s advantages in attracting talent are well known, from best-in-class public schools, to vibrant communities, to the attractions and sights of Washington, D.C.

Maj. Gen. Ted Mercer is the new CEO and executive director of Virginia Space, the owner and operator of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), collocated at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

COVID-19 has underscored the value of businesses embracing digital technologies in the healthcare space — from telehealth and remote patient monitoring to artificial intelligence (AI) for predictive analytics and diagnostic insights.

In recent years, the increased amount of available data — 64.2 zettabytes (equal to 1 trillion gigabytes) were created globally in 2020, compared to 2 zettabytes in 2010, according to Statista — and ways to analyze and use it have escalated the demand for data science professionals to fill data analyst, business intelligence engineer, and other roles.

E-commerce became the lifeblood of retailers and business-to-business (B2B) suppliers in 2020, yet the innovation that grew out of this need has disrupted industry norms forever. Research from the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and McKinsey & Co.

After a year of focusing on operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, data center investments are on the rise, with an eye on expanding capacity to meet pandemic-influenced changes in consumer behavior.

Consumers’ increasing demand for safe, sustainable, locally grown food is driving interest and investment in controlled-environment agriculture (CEA).

Across the wireless industry, 5G — the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, meant to deliver higher data speeds, lower latency, more reliability, and higher capacity — has been not just the next big thing, but a family of next big things.