In this essential look at the regrowth of the American Midwest, tech journalist Rebecca A. Fannin chronicles her return to America’s heartland, revealing the dramatic entrepreneurial comeback that is transforming the Rust Belt into the Tech Belt.

Order Silicon Heartland: Transforming the Midwest from Rust Belt to Tech Belt on Amazon.

Video Chapters:

2:57 What was the inspiration behind Silicon Heartland
5:06 The technology reviving the Heartland
6:38 The most important inputs driving the transformation of the Rust Belt
8:33 Working remote or physically moving to the Heartland
9:41 Who are the millennials moving in
12:49 How innovation has evolved in Youngstown, Ohio
16:05 Retooling traditional factories
19:38 What do the "winners" look like in the Rust Belt
24:31 What does the current version of the "factory worker" look like
27:05 Rebeccas’s writing process for Silicon Heartland
33:49 Czech company highlight — Likos

About Rebecca Fannin

Rebecca A. Fannin is a journalist, author, and a media entrepreneur who has covered global innovation for more than 20 years. She grew up in the Ohio heartland and graduated from Ohio University. She began her career at the Dayton Journal Herald. Then from a reporter’s cubicle at Crain Communications in Manhattan to the hottest dotcom magazine, Red Herring, in San Francisco, ventured to Beijing and Shanghai, and became one of the first American journalists to document China’s entrepreneurial rise.

Inspired by the tech founders she interviewed, she formed Silicon Dragon Ventures as her own media and events group. During Covid she added an online show featuring venture capitalists. She became a regular contributor to CNBC, and her articles also have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Inc., Fast Company, and Forbes.

Rebecca’s forward-looking books Silicon Dragon, Startup Asia, and Tech Titans of China, launched her as a commentator and public speaker. A guest on BBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, and NPR, and a quoted expert in the New York Times, she also has spoken at the Brookings Institution, Asia Society, and many universities including Harvard, Yale, and Oxford.

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