Interview with Haskell Berman, Co-founder of InnovationNJ and Senior Vice President at the Healthcare Institute of NJ
Haskell Berman is a co-founder of InnovationNJ, a coalition of innovative companies in NJ designed to work with government and education to create an environment of innovation. He is also currently the Senior Vice President of State Affairs at the Healthcare Institute of NJ. Previously, Berman worked as a lobbyist for Capital State Affairs, and he also has experience working as a director for Assemblymen and Congressmen.
NOTE: This interview was not recorded at the request of Mr. Berman. All responses are paraphrased.
InnovationNJ, a coalition of over 120 companies, was co-founded by Haskell Berman in 2010. Starting the coalition, Berman recruited 20 friends and acquaintances to join the company. Whereas most startups have a sort of exponential growth, where engagement accelerates over time, Berman was “surprised that, due to the publicity, [he] had groups coming out of the woodwork to join.” He said that this effort to create an innovation eco-system was on the mind of a lot of groups “working in silos” but he brought everyone together to create a community. Berman’s vision for the coalition when starting was different that what it turned out to be in practice, as he thought that, coming from a lobbyist background, they would be focusing on tax policies and regulatory issues, but InnovationNJ ended up focusing more on creating an “innovative ecosystem to mirror those in Boston and North Carolina”. They’ve worked to achieve this by bringing together education, goverment, and the private sector to help aid in R&D and exposure. Berman mentioned a report that InnovationNJ did to examine how universities and higher education institutions could contribute to the innovative environment better with 15 recommendations, and the Chris Christie administration adopted most of them. Though Berman admits they’re simple, they were definitely necessary: one was that universities and colleges should adopt more user-friendly websites so that companies looking to recruit or collaborate have an easier time doing so.
Talking about the HINJ, a “trade association for research-based pharma companies in NJ”. Berman makes the analogy that pharmaceutics is to NJ as the auto industry is to Michigan; it’s one of the biggest industries in the state. Connecting back to his work with InnovationNJ, he says that pharmaceutical companies came to him asking him to help them work with big universities more frictionlessly, which was a part of the aforementioned report, and said that “they go on the websites and can’t figure out who to call, but with a Harvard or Stanford, it is a lot easier.” Schools like Rowan, NJIT, and Rutgers all adopted this practice to help them work better with industry, which Berman says was a unique occurrence. Elaborating on the report, Berman said that the main recommendation of the report was that there should be a major database, ResearchWithNJ. “Let’s say you need an expert in the field. How do you find that person?” This database makes that search a lot easier, with industry-specific, reputable personnel. The usefulness of databases similar to this is apparent through the commonness of these databases; Berman said that there were 50 other databases like it across the country. This database has various benefits for the state as a whole. For one, a company can find professors and experts at various institutions in a specific field in NJ, they don’t need to go out of state to find experts. Also, this database can help keep research dollars in-state. It also raises awareness in the business community of the resources at New Jersey universities. For a more current accounting of what InnovationNJ is doing, they send out a weekly newsletter to their community that “keeps everyone apprised”. With more than 2,000 members, it raises awareness and creates exposure. Berman says that InnovationNJ “jumpstarted a movement that draws attention to innovation and creating an innovation environment”, and a big part of this is through exposure.
Another part of Berman’s plan for InnovationNJ that shifted in practice were events. Other similar coalitions like TechUnited hold networking events and panels regularly, and Berman said that initially, that was his plan for InnovationNJ as well. However, as members joined, he realized that there was no need for him to hold events; the companies that were part of InnovationNJ were holding their own events, and just needed exposure, which InnovationNJ could provide. So, he says that now, they “take everybody else’s events, the co-brand, and they promote them”. He also mentions the interaction between the members of InnovationNJ. Berman describes companies in NJ as siloed, and little pieces of a pie, and what InnovationNJ does is connect them with each other and sort of matchmake companies that should know each other.
HINJ has a similar goal to InnovationNJ, creating an innovative ecosystem for lifesciences companies. They try to “advocate for lifesciences companies, finding out why companies move out of NJ and trying to address that”. A key problem that he mentions is infrastructure. Earlier, NJ only had one, free-standing medical school; the only state whose flagship state university did not have a medical school. So, when big pharmaceutical companies wanted to come to research in NJ, the medical side could be at the medical school, while the research part was at Rutgers, and this inconvenience and separation forced companies to go elsewhere to research and innovate. With the aid of HINJ, after the 2012 merger of UMDNJ and Rutgers, that problem was solved and there are now four medical schools in NJ. A lack of clinical trials is also alarming. Currently, 12 of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies have some form of headquarters in NJ, but NJ is 17th-25th in the country in the number of clinical trials. The short answer is that we didn’t have the infrastructure, but RBHS is building the infrastructure necessary, and not only are individual institutions building this infrastructure, they’re also collaborating to create the best environment for more clinical trials. To sum up what HINJ does, Berman said, “We advocate for the industry, what the industry needs to grow here, and my guys alone represent about 18 percent of the state’s GDP, direct and indirect. We support, directly and indirectly, 10 percent of the state’s jobs.” People and companies under Berman employ about 60,000 people, but also support 350,000 other jobs in the state, showing the importance of the lifesciences industry to the state and the importance of HINJ itself. In Berman’s words, “HINJ is keeping the state vibrant, and again, lifesciences is to NJ what automotives are to Michigan, what oil is to Texas.”
For more information, visit innovationnj.net and hinj.org