JP Morgan Chase announced a $300,000 grant to New Jersey Innovation Institute during its Small Business Forward event at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), where regional business, civic, nonprofit and government leaders came together to discuss Newark’s burgeoning health care IT cluster.
Small Business Forward is a global $30 million, five-year initiative philanthropic initiative that supports small businesses by connecting them to critical resources that help them grow faster, create jobs and strengthen local economies. Through Small Business Forward, JPMorgan Chase is supporting the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), which has worked for two years to apply the intellectual and technological resources of the university to building the healthcare IT cluster in Newark. JPMorgan Chase and NJII understand that entrepreneurial success relies on a good business idea and support systems that increase access to capital, training, skilled workers, supply chains, facilities and new markets. When these supports serve “clusters” of small businesses working in the same sector, they provide a cost-effective, scalable platform that can benefit successive generations of companies and help establish communities as hubs of sectoral innovation.
“When cities build economic clusters aligned with their core strengths, they attract entrepreneurs and promote growth,” said Marc Sheridan, Northeast Region Head of J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “Small Business Forward is proud to provide grants to innovative nonprofits that help small businesses grow more quickly through access to resources.”
Don Sebastian, President of NJII, stated, “Funding from JPMorgan Chase will allow NJII to grow Newark’s health IT cluster and extend the services of NJIT’s Enterprise Development Center (EDC) and the capabilities of the new NJII Healthcare Delivery Systems iLab by piloting a new initiative, the Health IT Entrepreneurial Connection Program. The program targets growth-stage health IT entrepreneurs seeking to accelerate the commercialization of their innovative products and services. NJII’s objective is to help these companies achieve 20 percent or more annual revenue growth.”
Northeast Region Head of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Marc Sheridan was joined by NJIT President Joel Bloom, Newark Deputy Mayor Baye Adofo-Wilson and NJII President Donald Sebastian. Sebastian moderated a panel on clusters and innovation networks that included distinguished economic development leaders and health care IT entrepreneurs including Otis Rolley, President and CEO of the Newark Community Economic Development Corporation (NCEDC); Ed Morrison of the Purdue Center for Regional Development; and Adam Turinas, CEO of Practice Unite, a Newark-based health care IT company.
The NJII, an NJIT corporation, is one of the inaugural grant recipients in JP Morgan Chase’s Small Business Forward initiative, which is designed to boost small business support networks that help growing enterprises in specific industries. Funding from JP Morgan Chase is enabling NJII to grow Newark’s health IT cluster via its new Health IT Entrepreneurial Connection Program, which helps . Health IT cluster-focused networking efforts link targeted companies to potential customers, strategic partners and suppliers, and affordable facilities, enabling them to leverage their capabilities, strengthen their product pipelines and accelerate their growth.
Research conducted by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City demonstrates that the cluster strategy is quickly becoming a critically important economic development tool for top metro areas around the country and around the world. The JP Morgan Chase-commissioned research shows that over an 8-year period, metro areas with high performing clusters produced three times the value of products and services of other businesses in those markets.
