Bendis and Innovation America in the News

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Chairman Quayle and Ranking Member Edwards, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation on the important topic of “Fostering the U.S. Competitive Edge: Examining the Effect of Federal Policies on Competition, Innovation, and Job Growth.”

My name is Richard Bendis and I am the President and CEO of BioHealth Innovation Inc., (BHI). BHI is a private-public partnership that is predominantly funded by the private sector to foster biohealth innovation-based economic development, which is a unique cluster-based model for regional economic development. This initiative could be used as a model program regardless of industry or cluster strength.

BHI is the first regionally focused innovation intermediary created to connect the university and hospital biohealthresearch strengths of Baltimore with the bioscience industry and federal laboratory strengths of Montgomery County. It has entered into a Partnership Intermediary Agreement with the National Institutes of Health's Office of Technology Transfer and has created the first private-sector funded Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program to identify commercializable science in the 27 institutes of NIH. This program will create new project-based companies and high-paying life science jobs. BHI believes this EIR program is applicable to many federal agencies that have technology transfer offices and support SBIR programs.

BHI has designed a potential national pilot, the Health-Regional Innovation Cluster (H-RIC) model, which will incorporate the best innovation-based economic development practices in the United States and integrate them into one region in Central Maryland. BHI is currently seeking federal financial support from several relevant federal agency partners to accelerate the creation and implemention of this innovative biohealth H-RIC model.

Kitchener - It's a one-day conference, true. It's also the place to be for everyone who's anyone in tech in Waterloo Region. More than 500 delegates attend the Tech Leadership Conference each year, sharing ideas, meeting new people and causing collisions to accelerate your business. Don't miss it!

Communitech’s 2012 Tech Leadership Concert runs Tuesday April 10, 7:30am - 4:45pm, at Bingemans Conference Centre, 425 Bingemans Conference Centre Drive, Kitchener.

Leuven is one of the most prominent examples of knowledge based regional development in the world. Intensive collaboration between the local government, KU Leuven University and the Business community Leuven has resulted in a thriving innovative economy.

This success has now even reached the point were Leuven is too small and expansion is needed beyond regional borders. Genk is the region which Leuven is extensively working with. This former mining city is transforming it’s economy to a knowledge driven economy. The inter-regional collaboration with Leuven provides Genk a fast track for this transition.

Gust, the investor relations platform connecting high-growth entrepreneurs and active early stage investors, and DiligentDeal, a conference organizer in the early stage investment space, will host their first annual conference, Venture Forward 2012, in New York City on Thursday, June 20. The day-long event, taking place at the New York Academy of Sciences, will convene the country’s leading angel investors and early-stage venture capitalists to collaborate and share industry insights on the rapidly evolving early stage investing market through a series of interactive panel discussions, keynote addresses and fireside interviews.

“The landscape of equity funding for early-stage entrepreneurial ventures is undergoing a revolution. Venture Forward 2012 will bring together the industry’s leaders for a high-level knowledge exchange about the challenges and opportunities facing early stage investors, and the rapidly changing legislative and economic landscape,” said David S. Rose, CEO of Gust and one of the country’s most active super-angel investors. “The conference will provide an exclusive opportunity for attendees to learn from, and engage with, the world-class investors and financial technology entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of these changes.”