by Nicholas C. Martinez
The New Jersey Business Incubation Network, an organization that provides business assistance to start-ups and small businesses in New Jersey, honored 18 companies on April 25th at their 2nd Annual NJBIN Awards ceremony in Bordentown Township. The honorees hail from a variety of fields, including the pharmaceutical, information technology and engineering industries.
“With our awards, we are recognizing the companies that are already making contributions to New Jersey’s economic growth,” said Suzanne Zammit, president of NJBIN.
The NJBIN is a collaborative community of business experts and resource facilities dedicated to the commercial success of early stage entrepreneurial companies. The organization divides New Jersey into 13 zones each with their own incubator, a place where the corporate leaders of tomorrow go to grow their businesses today.
“The Commercialization Center for Innovative Technologies has been a blessing to us over the past five years,” said Rodolfo Haedo, Vice President of Nanion Technologies’s North American division. He added that the incubator has been “providing super affordable rent and beautiful modern lab space, while decreasing the common financial pressures that small startups endure.”
While some zones specialize in nurturing particular industries, (for example, the Rutgers Food Innovation Center in Bridgeton gravitates towards developing culinary-based ideas) the overall goal of the statewide system is to conceive and nurture the next Microsoft, Northrop Grumman or Pfizer with the hopes that the company will remain in-state in order to boost the local job market and economy.
“New Jersey’s small businesses employ just over 50 percent of the state’s private-sector labor force,” Zammit said. “Many of these new jobs will come from NJBIN incubator startup and early-stage companies.”
Here are the winners, categorized by zone/incubator:
Bergen Community College Regional Accelerator at The Meadowlands:
Agreenability
Optimal Solutions, Inc.
Burlington County College High Technology and Life Science Incubators:
American CryoStem
Nothing But Green Living Enterprises LLC
Commercialization Center for Innovative Technologies, North Brunswick:
Ascendia Pharmaceuticals LLC
Nanion Technologies
Enterprise Development Center – NJIT:
Phone.com
WattLots LLC
JuiceTank, Somerset
Applied Dynamic Solutions (ADS)
Zeenov Inc.
Rutgers Camden Incubator:
CSF Technologies
DCM Architecture & Engineering
Rutgers EcoComplex, Bordentown:
AL-G Technologies
Energy Catalysis Inc.
Rutgers Food Innovation Center, Bridgeton:
First Field
Limpert Brothers Inc.
The Incubator Inc., Plainfield
Milena Wilson, Esq. LLC
Business Development Center, Asbury Park
PolitePersistence LLC
Photos: Chris Connor, Jerry Creighton, Ari Rabban, Bill Kaufman, Judith Sheft: NJIT EDC Incubator
