NJIT N.J. Innovation Institute receives 300K grant from JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase on Friday announced a $300,000 grant to the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s New Jersey Innovation Institute that will help health care technology entrepreneurs launch new products and services.Chase announced the grant in Newark during its Small Business Forward event at NJIT, where regional business, civic, nonprofit and government leaders came together to discuss ways to grow Newark’s health care IT cluster. NJIT New Jersey Innovation Institute has also been working for the past two years to deploy the university’s expertise to building it up.

Small Business Forward is a global, $30 million, five-year philanthropic initiative that supports small businesses by connecting them to critical resources that help foster growth, create jobs and strengthen local economies.

 “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, said funds from JPMorgan Chase will allow NJII to grow Newark’s health IT cluster and extend the services of NJIT’s new-business incubator, the Enterprise Development Center, 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,” Sebastian said. “NJII’s objective is to help these companies achieve 20 percent or more annual revenue growth.”

Chase said research by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City demonstrates that the industry cluster strategy is becoming a valuable economic development tool for top metro areas around the country and around the world. The JPMorgan 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. 

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