As it builds on the legacy of Baiju Shah, BioEnterprise will shift from coaching start-ups to guiding mature businesses in the years ahead.
View full sizeBaiju Shah, the only leader BioEnterprise has known, surprised his board of directors July 17 with news he was leaving to run a local biotech start-up. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The region's bioscience industry was little more than a specialty niche 10 years ago, when BioEnterprise was born, and the business accelerator for years dealt mostly with start-ups.
What a difference a productive decade makes. The next leader of BioEnterprise will look out on a 20,000-job industry with more than 700 companies needing help and guidance at all stages of development.
As they seek an executive who can grasp that role, members of the board of BioEnterprise face a tall but critical challenge, according to local economic development specialists. After a decade of success, they say, BioEnterprise is too bright to fade.
"Without a doubt, their work is not done," said Brad Whitehead, president of the philanthropic Fund for Our Economic Future, a BioEnterprise founder. "There has been extraordinary progress in the last decade. I mean in 2002, people were saying it's too late for Northeast Ohio in bioscience. Now, we're running with the big dogs."
Surprise announcement for board
Recently, that run met an unexpected change in course. Baiju Shah, the only leader BioEnterprise has known, surprised his board of directors July 17 with news he was leaving to run a local biotech start-up.
Board members, who represent several high-powered institutions, are now scrambling to put together a transition plan.
A national search is a possibility but the committee has expressed confidence in the quality of the staff Shah assembled and some observers expect the board to hire from within. Speculative glances fall upon Aram Nerpouni, BioEnterprise's vice president of strategic development. The Stanford-trained scientist recently rejoined BioEnterprise after serving as the chief administrative officer of Akron's Austen BioInnovation Institute, which he helped to start.
Board leaders declined to comment on prospects or on a process that has barely begun. Shah, who referred questions to the board, has agreed to stay on until his successor is chosen and to help the board achieve a smooth transition.
That might be longer than he anticipated.
The executive committee, charged with finding Shah's successor, is a busy bunch that has struggled to schedule a meeting. It includes Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University, Monte Ahuja, past chairman of University Hospitals board of directors, Matt Hermann, managing director of Ascension Health Ventures, and Joseph Scaminace, the chief executive of the OM Group.
"We will be meeting soon to consider options and will have more to share after adopting a transition plan," Scaminace, the board president, wrote in an email.
Innovation in Cleveland
Scaminace is also the vice chairman of the board of the Cleveland Clinic. At this point of transition, he and other board members -- many connected to leading regional research institutions -- have reaffirmed their commitment to BioEnterprise and the need to support Cleveland's medical and scientific economy.
"In the years since the creation of BioEnterprise, our efforts have helped advance Northeast Ohio's economy by bringing new jobs and resources to the region," the executive committee said in a prepared statement. "Our commitment to these outcomes has become even greater over time."
BioEnterprise emerged in 2002 out of a desire to launch Cleveland deeper into the innovation economy by building on regional strengths in medical devices and health-care technology. It was founded by the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University.
The agency's goal, to create scientific companies and jobs, meant identifying promising technology, connecting researchers to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and guiding fruitful partnerships. BioEnterprise is not a funding agency. It offers only guidance and expertise in the complex world of science and technology commercialization.
Shah, 40, helped design the agency and became its first CEO, bringing an uncommon array of skills.
Educated at Yale and Harvard universities, he had gleaned insight into business strategy as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. More significant, maybe, the son of Indian immigrants moved easily between cultures, displaying a knack for seeing the shared aims among strangers and forging consensus.
That's how he became chairman of the board of Global Cleveland. For years, Cleveland dithered on whether to extend a welcome to immigrants, even as old ethnic neighborhoods emptied and its population plunged.
Then in 2010 the Jewish Federation of Cleveland recruited Shah to lead the conversation. He assembled a board representing leading businesses, foundations and political camps and rallied it behind a mission of repopulating the region with multicultural talent. In February, sooner than many expected, Cleveland opened its first international welcome center near Public Square.
"We asked him to lead because he has a gift," said federation President Stephen Hoffman. "We had a lot of conflicting views of what the center should be, and he succeeded in forming a common goal, one that most people were able to sign off on."
More impressive to business leaders has been Shah's impact at BioEnterprise. The local bioscience industry mushroomed in the last decade, adding about 300 companies and 5,000 often high-paying jobs.
Cleveland's bioscience companies now attract an average $150 million a year in capital investment, according to BioEnterprise, compared to $30 million in 2001.
The region's constellation of 714 bioscience companies includes the start-up Neuros Medical, a developer of neurostimulation devices for reducing pain. It recently attracted $3.5 million in venture capital, much of it from Boston.
Jon Snyder was an entrepreneur in Chicago when he decided to launch the company in Cleveland with technology licensed from CWRU. He said he knew he could count upon BioEnterprise for guidance and contacts and he came to work closely with Shah as a CEO-in-residence.
"He's a good strategic leader. He can present a vision and get the people and parts together and make sure it gets done," he said.
Picking from talent
Snyder, a former executive at Mentor's Steris Corp., said Shah is uncommon but no longer unique in Northeast Ohio.
"I don't know who they will replace Baiju with, but the region has a lot of talent in the bioscience sector now," he said. "There's a lot of good people in this space."
That person will need to be able to broaden BioEnterprise's historical scope beyond start-ups, and help mature companies take the next step in their evolution, says Tom Waltermire, the former chief executive of PolyOne and the executive director of the regional business attraction group Team Northeast Ohio.
The position demands someone who possessed "a significant job in the private sector" but can shift to the consensus-building demands of the non-profit sector, Waltermire said.
"That's just a completely different kind of skill, keeping people together, pulling them in the same direction," he said.
It will help to understand the local bioscience industry, too.
"BioEnterprise is evolving toward cluster building," Waltermire said. "That's where the jobs come from. You want these companies that they helped start to turn into thriving enterprises."