HOME
Author and businessman George E. L. Barbee is one of the original Batten Fellow faculty members (along with Jim Collins and Malcolm Gladwell) at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He has been teaching innovation for the past 15 years at Darden which was recently ranked as the "best graduate business education experience in the world" by The Economist magazine.
His book, "63 Innovation Nuggets", was published in 2015 and has received accolades from many notable sources including reviews by Fortune, Forbes and Inc. magazines. Fortune's reviewer said, "It’s “tough to find anyone with longer, more varied experience with innovation than George Barbee.”
Barbee’s 45-year business career has taken him to over 40 different countries and he has founded three successful entrepreneurial companies. As an entrepreneur, George co-founded the Consumer Financial Institute which became the 'largest independent provider of financial planning in the US' and eventually sold the company to Price Waterhouse (now PWC).
Barbee received Darden’s highest alumni honor, the Charles C. Abbott Award, in 2000. He has written and originated numerous articles, and appeared multiple times on NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, PBS and CNN, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
As a consultant, he has led innovation with Fortune 100 companies including Gillette, General Electric, PepsiCo, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Two Richmond-area businessmen, Will Loving and Brad Cummings, are developing a 36,000-square-foot, five-story building at 1717 E. Cary Street. in Shockoe Bottom as an incubator office for startup businesses. Renovation of the former tobacco warehouse will begin just days after our visit and should begin leasing in 2018.
The concept behind the facility is modeled on business incubators in other cities, such as Washington’s 1776 startup incubator. The idea is to gather promising entrepreneurial companies together with the resources that can help them grow. Three local organizations that support startup businesses — RichTech, The Venture Forum and Lighthouse Labs — plan to have a presence at the incubator.
The building between 17th and 18th streets was built in 1917 as the Virginia Bonded Warehouse and features an elevator designed to take tobacco wagons and the horses pulling them to the upper floors. It features brick and wooden beam construction and hardwood floors.
Home Contact Us Previous Events
1801 E. Cary Street - Richmond, VA 23223 - 804-986-1403
