Richard Bendis has significant experience building biotech clusters in formerly “flyover” regions (e.g., places that lack the infrastructure to support tech-based entrepreneurs and companies). Around 2009-2010, he was giving a presentation at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., on how to build these regions around an industry-driven private-public partnership. After the talk, someone from Johns Hopkins approached him and said they had been trying—with little success—to build a biotech cluster in Maryland. They asked him to come to Montgomery County, Maryland, the epicenter of the region's life sciences industry.
Bendis accepted the challenge and began working as a consultant for Montgomery County. He created an advisory board that considered forming an organization to foster greater interaction among academia, government, and industry in the region. The group asked Bendis to serve as the interim CEO of a new organization that would serve as an innovation intermediary in the region. Bendis founded BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) in 2011; Bendis created the term “BioHealth” for BioHealth Innovation as a more relevant term than biotechnology or biosciences due to the convergence of technology and the life science industry. BHI held its first board meeting in January 2012. The board continues to be industry-led, and market-driven.
Richard “Rich” Bendis
Founder, President, and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, Inc.
Bendis presented recommendations on how to get everyone engaged and told them they would need three years of funding to keep going and meet their goals. He also told the group, "Everybody has to step up to the table." At first, there was dead silence. Bendis pressed, saying, "Who is going to be engaged first?" The first person to commit was Montgomery County’s County Executive, who offered $500,000 per year for three years.
“Once he made the commitment, industry and academia followed,” said Bendis. “But it took government to take the initiative. So, you never know where the champion is going to come from. But it is necessary to identify a respected regional leader that can help mobilize all of the other partners.”
The organization's geographic scope quickly expanded from Montgomery County to the surrounding area. "Medimmune (now AstraZeneca) said, 'we don't care where anybody is from," Bendis recalled. "(They weren't worried) about state borders, county borders, city borders, rivers or bridges," said Bendis. "(They just wanted) to see the whole ecosystem working together." Then, the president of Johns Hopkins said that if they included Baltimore—located in Baltimore County—in a regional initiative, the university would join and become active on the board. The Montgomery County Executive did not hesitate to accept Johns Hopkins' proposal, saying, "If that's what it's going to take to get this going, then let's do it."
“That's the kind of support you need,” said Bendis.
The next step was to create a brand for the region. People were calling the region the DMV for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, which suggested "Division of Motor Vehicles" more than "biotech cluster." Medimmune/AstraZeneca pushed for a brand comparable to Route 128 in Boston, the Research Triangle, Austin, Texas, and Silicon Valley. The group decided upon the “BioHealth Capital Region.”
One negative outcome of having no brand was that they were missing out on higher ratings in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News' (GEN) annual Top 10 U.S. Biopharma Clusters list. When the publication started ranking the Maryland area, it ranked only a five-mile stretch on Interstate 270. Thus, the area struggled to achieve a top 10 ranking. Other clusters, such as Boston/Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay Area, and New York/New Jersey, get credit for activity beyond specific city or state borders.
Medimmune/AstraZeneca spearheaded the branding effort. They paid their public relations firm to host a series of meetings over six months to determine whether the regional effort would benefit from having a brand. They concluded that it would.
The first order of business after deciding to create a brand was to gain a better understanding of the region's challenges. Bendis led a gap analysis, speaking with nearly 100 people across 55 organizations. The most significant gap they identified was a lack of support for commercialization. "A lot of these people were researchers at academia, or they had spun out of NIH, or they were creating their own company, but they didn't have a lot of business experience,” said Bendis. “So, one of the major gaps was how to get commercialization of business expertise to these people when they need it." To fill this gap, BHI created the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program.
The gap analysis had revealed that at NIH, there was a 60-person technology transfer office that was not proactive about engaging with investors or industry. Bendis suggested they bring in an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR). This person would be someone who understands the industry, marketing, investment, and the needs of strategic partners. NIH agreed to the concept but did not have the funds to support such a person. Bendis said BHI would fund the first EIR. NIH has 27 individual institutes, and several asked whether they could have an EIR as well. As a nonprofit, BHI couldn't fund multiple EIRs, but it offered to help recruit EIRs if the institutes could find the funding.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) contracted for the second EIR. "They were very proactive about wanting to have commercialization for their ... small business innovation research programs.... They were making investments in these companies, and these companies didn't have a lot of business or commercialization expertise." The institute provided funding, and BHI did the recruiting, kept the EIRs on its payroll, and helped manage their work.
Now, BHI has 33 EIRs located nationally in addition to servicing NIH. It is the exclusive provider of EIRs to ARPA-H-funded companies. Additionally, they have a contract with Montgomery County for the Montgomery County Executives-in-Residence program, which provides life-sciences-specific services to selected local companies. And they have recently contracted BioHealth-managed EIRs to support commercialization for companies located at BARDA's SPARK Accelerator in Washington, D.C.
The BHI gap analysis also found that many early-stage entrepreneurs in Maryland and the BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) were applying for SBIR grants but had a below-average success rate. Moreover, no one in the region was providing support for these companies. In response, BHI developed an internal team of analysts to support early-stage entrepreneurs who wanted to submit proposals. So far, BHI has helped more than 200 companies, with a 46% success rate and over $100 million of SBIR awards for their clients. BHI provides these services at minimal cost to companies; if the company is successful, BHI gets a success fee. BHI uses this money to help support other companies.
BHI also works directly with the region's university technology transfer offices. BHI has worked with several universities and currently has a contract with Georgetown University to provide EIRs and analysts to the recently launched Georgetown Tech Ventures (GTV). They are helping to evaluate GTV's technology pipeline, determine which innovations have commercial potential, and develop strategies for what to do with those technologies.
One indicator of success, to Bendis, would be that people understand the region's vibrancy. That they are perceived in this way is illustrated by their rise in GEN's Top 10 ratings.
One of the goals for the BioHealth Capital Region was to improve its ranking to number three. They have accomplished that goal. From 2016 through 2021, they ranked as low as sixth. By 2022, one year ahead of their goal, BioHealth Capital Region ranked number three, and they have maintained that ranking through 2025.
BioHealth Innovation has been successful due to the public-private partnership of its mission and governance, as well as being blind to artificial geographic boundaries,” said Bendis. “The goal now is to maintain our number three ranking,”
NOTE: A longer version of this article that contains more details about how BHI uses events to build the ecosystem, specifics about its GEN ratings, and more, is posted on the BHI website here.
This page was prepared by SSTI using Federal funds under award ED22HDQ3070129 from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration or the U.S. Department of Commerce.