The Central Region Ecosystem for Arts, Technology, and Entrepreneurship (CREATE) is a non-profit organization headquartered at the Western Kentucky University Innovation Campus in Bowling Green, Kentucky–with additional offices in Elizabethtown and, soon, Owensboro.

CREATE’s mission is to foster an innovation environment that brings collaborators together across stakeholder groups to share their networks, design and test new ideas, commercialize proven solutions, and grow those solutions here.

CREATE provides those collaborators with connections, concepts, commercialization support, and space to support the growth of innovative projects—all aimed at providing opportunities for talented people to achieve their potential, individually and collectively, in this region. Our success is ultimately measured in opportunities and jobs.

For more than two decades, as an independent 501(c)(3), CREATE has facilitated the development, growth, recruitment, and retention of emerging businesses with national and international markets in our region, and fostered an environment to support and sustain world-class applied research. CREATE has helped recruit and establish hundreds of startup companies in the region, generating thousands of jobs with cumulative payroll in excess of $100 million, and revenues in excess of $1 billion.

At the WKU Innovation Campus in Bowling Green, CREATE has long co-managed the WKU Small Business Accelerator and hosts various centers for the WKU Applied Research & Technology Program. In 2022,  CREATE also co-launched the WKU Collaborative SmartSpace, a 30,000-square-foot collaborative space for creative and strategy talent. Today, we support a range of innovation initiatives headquartered at the WKU Innovation Campus and throughout our region.

Our goal is the continued acceleration of opportunities and jobs in this ecosystem:

• along the Kentucky/Tennessee corridor of I-65 that connects Bowling Green to Nashville—one of the fastest growing metro areas in the U.S.
• along the I-65 corridor from Bowling Green to Elizabethtown that has attracted the two largest corporate investments in Kentucky history in 2021/2022 to make Kentucky a leader in electric automotive battery production
• and along the I-165 corridor that connects Bowling Green to Owensboro, running through the heart of the Western Kentucky Coal Field region that has helped define Kentucky’s history in food, music, and culture

CREATE is an Innovation Hub for KY Innovation, a division of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, and is also supported by WKU;  the City of Bowling Green;  Warren County, KY;  Hardin County, KY; and the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce.