BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Sam Ford has focused on innovating organizations for many years. Now, he’s working with Western Kentucky University to transform the Bowling Green Mall — the first-ever mall in the city.  

But unlike its predecessor, this re-imagined space doesn’t have retail stores. The 20-acre WKU Innovation Campus Headquarters is a hub for innovation and development. 

“One of the things this place has proven is that you have the opportunity to adaptively reuse,” Ford said. 

About half the space is used for labs, meeting rooms and resources for people who work at the innovation campus, while the other half is for companies based on the campus. It is also home to a 30,000-square-foot shared working space, which fosters a collaborative working environment. 

“This is really a place where researchers from WKU and students and staff are working alongside innovation problems, that are working alongside startups,” Ford said. 

For the video production company, Forerunner, the space has opened the doors to working with companies they probably wouldn’t have connected with before. During the pandemic, the company started working closely with their neighbor, a medical sciences company. 

“I don’t know if something like that would happen so quickly and easily without a space like this,” Andrew Swanson, co-owner and CEO of Forerunner Video Production Company, said. 

Buddy Steen, the CEO of WKU’s Innovation Campus, is focused on cultivating this type of thriving ecosystem. “If you have talent, available talent, and you recruit talent, then the companies will come and they will stay and they will grow,” Steen said.