CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - Jan 15, 2014) -  TechNexus, a venture collaborative, is the entrepreneurial partner for the inaugural Forbes Reinventing America Summit, scheduled for March 26-28, 2014, at Chicago's JW Marriott. This invitation-only event will bring together leaders of the next industrial revolution for a non-partisan discussion about the role of heartland innovation in the U.S. economy's recovery.

"We're happy to partner with Forbes as part of our national engagement, and help bring its inaugural Reinventing America Summit to Chicago," said Terry Howerton, Co-Founder and CEO of TechNexus. "We believe that the best way to reinvent America is to empower established corporations to collaborate with entrepreneurs," he continued. "Technology is a driver of business processes and implementation, so every company is a 'tech' company, and there's a tremendous opportunity to help them innovate successfully."

Participants include the Mayor of the City of Chicago Rahm Emanuel; Forbes Media Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes; Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company; Harold G. Hamm, Chairman and CEO, Continental Resources; Sam Zell, Chairman and Founder, Equity Group Investments; David Cote, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell; Indiana Governor Mike Pence and North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple among many others. Presenting sponsors include Northwestern Mutual and Samsung. Supporting sponsors are Horatio Alger Association and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

"The goal of this summit is to incubate the successes of the nation's industrial core, and there's no better place to celebrate creativity and ingenuity than in Chicago, the city of industry," said Steve Forbes, Forbes Media Chairman and Editor-in-Chief. "Too often industries in the heartland are overlooked, and yet many of them from Wal-Mart and Ford to Honeywell are leveraging technology and driving innovative manufacturing techniques in unique ways. Our hope is to show how many of these companies are truly helping reinvent America."

As Forbes' entrepreneurial partner, Howerton will lead part of the Summit on ways that industry leaders can unlock innovative success by collaborating with entrepreneurs on the frontier of what's been standard practice, drawing on the experiences of TechNexus and its corporate partners. Forbes will also be its ongoing exclusive national partner on communicating an ongoing program, called Innovation Priorities 2014, that will research and propose solutions to the tech challenges facing America's leading industries, starting with Retail & Analytics next month.

TechNexus, a venture collaborative, co-founds disruptive technology ventures on the frontiers of innovation by aligning corporations with entrepreneurs, assembling the right combination of staff, engineers, and resources, and then guiding those businesses to markets and customers that generate revenue faster and more successfully. Its national, open network of incubators, talent, and ideas is anchored in a new 50,000 sq. ft. workspace in Chicago's historic Civic Opera House.

For more information on the Forbes Reinventing America Summit, please visit:
http://www.forbes.com/conferences/2014/ReinventingAmerica-2014.html