Congratulations to David Johnson, President & CEO of the BioCrossroads life sciences initiative, who was appointed by the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Board of Directors as CICP's new President & CEO this afternoon:

BioCrossroads President David Johnson is named President & CEO of Central Indiana Corporate Partnership

Johnson will succeed Mark Miles at helm of regional CEO alliance; will continue to lead CICP’s BioCrossroads life sciences initiative

(INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., December 18, 2012) The Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) announced today that BioCrossroads CEO David Johnson will succeed Mark Miles as its President & CEO.  CICP is a coalition of the CEOs of major private employers and university presidents focused on the long-term economic vitality of the region and state.  Johnson was an original organizer of BioCrossroads, the life sciences initiative founded by CICP in 2002, and has served as its President & CEO since 2005; in this role, he also serves as a member of the CICP Executive Committee.

The CICP Board of Directors selected Johnson by acclamation at its meeting this afternoon to succeed Mark Miles, who recently ended his five-year tenure with the influential economic development group to take on the post of CEO of Hulman & Company.

“We didn’t have to look far afield to find there is no better prepared or qualified candidate to take the reins at CICP than David Johnson,” said Denny Oklak, Chairman of Duke Realty and co-chair of CICP.  “David helped create and has led CICP’s first industry initiative [BioCrossroads], knows the organization intimately through his participation on our Executive Committee, and is well-respected by the business community, policymakers and opinion leaders alike for his tenure at BioCrossroads as well as an illustrious legal career and many civic endeavors.”

At BioCrossroads, Johnson has been responsible for raising more than $140 million in dedicated venture capital for Indiana life sciences start-up companies and roughly $100 million in philanthropic funding focused on strategic initiatives in science and technology education, health informatics, and most recently OrthoWorx, a regional partnership to grow the orthopedics sector in and around Warsaw, Indiana.  He will continue in his role as President & CEO of BioCrossroads along with his new duties at CICP.

“David has made BioCrossroads a national model for how private industry, academia, research institutions and the public sector can work together to capitalize on an industry cluster and promote real economic growth,” noted Jo Ann Gora, President of Ball State University and co-chair of CICP.  “BioCrossroads paved the way for the many successes of CICP’s other initiatives – Conexus Indiana, TechPoint, and the Energy Systems Network – and David has been there every step of the way. 

“He has been a valuable partner to Mark [Miles] and the rest of the CICP team, and he is uniquely qualified to follow him as President & CEO.”

In taking the helm at CICP, Johnson will oversee a growing portfolio of initiatives focused on workforce development, entrepreneurship, innovation and business climate with a continued emphasis on key economic sectors – the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and logistics, information technology and energy.  CICP is also a leading advocate for regional mass transit and an increasingly active voice on issues like K-12 education reform.

“The collective influence and insight of CICP’s members make it a real catalyst for economic progress,” said Johnson.  “I’m honored to be chosen to lead the group and welcome the challenge of building on the momentum generated by Mark Miles, who brought so much energy and an innovative spirit to the role.”

According to Johnson, the need for a CEO-led group like CICP has only grown since the organization was founded in 1998.

“In 2001, CICP put forward a blueprint for economic development that still guides policymakers today, and over the last decade built the infrastructure for initiatives like BioCrossroads, Conexus, TechPoint and the Energy Systems Network to energize our major industries,” Johnson continued.  “Today we still face major challenges – educating Hoosiers for tomorrow’s careers, creating more high-skill jobs in Indiana, building an entrepreneurial business climate – and we need an organization with the credibility and clout to tackle our most daunting issues.”

Prior to his time as President of BioCrossroads, Johnson was a partner with the Indianapolis-based law firm Baker & Daniels (now Faegre Baker Daniels) with a practice that included public finance, major public-private investment projects and economic development transactions.  He serves on the Purdue Research Foundation board, the IU Research & Technology Corporation External Advisory Committee, and the Notre Dame Graduate Studies and Research Council.  He is also a member of the Indianapolis Charter School Board.

He is a graduate of Harvard University (where he was a Rhodes Scholar) and Harvard Law; he served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee before embarking on his legal career.

Johnson will assume his new responsibilities with CICP effective immediately.

Another member of our CICP Board of Directors, Collina Ventures’ Mark Hill, has penned a compelling piece on the need to reform local government – part of an ongoing editorial push on the part of the Indianapolis Star and a network of other Indiana newspapers to raise awareness of the need to streamline and consolidate the thousands of political offices that form a haphazard patchwork of bureaucracies across the state.

As someone who’s spent his career in the tech sector, Hill understands the power of technology to cut costs and enhance productivity.  A tech pundit once estimated that if progress in the rest of the economy matched progress in the computer sector, a Cadillac would cost $5.91, while ten minutes’ labor would buy a year’s worth of groceries.

Unfortunately, Indiana’s system of local government is anti-innovation – instead of becoming more efficient, it’s grown increasingly outdated and cumbersome.

Here is Hill’s op-ed:

Power of innovation can fix local government

Last week, the Indiana General Assembly convened at the statehouse to face the most daunting fiscal situation in a generation or more – a billion dollar deficit. 

But budget problems aren’t confined to the state level, and our lawmakers’ responsibilities don’t stop there either.  Across Indiana, local communities are dealing with the dual effects of the recession and property tax caps; Indianapolis alone faced a $50 million shortfall for its 2011 budget. 

The state legislature can help our cities and counties do more with less, by mustering the political courage to reform our broken system of local government. 

My career has been spent in the technology sector, a field that thrives on new ideas and change.  The power of high-tech innovation tends to cut costs and increase productivity.  My experience tells me that the big gains from technology actually come using the technology to change the process.

Unfortunately, our system of local government has not materially changed for more than a century-and-a-half; so instead of evolving to become more efficient and less costly, it’s done just the opposite.  It’s grown into a cumbersome and confusing maze of bureaucracy, notable for the quantity of political offices rather than the quality of public services provided.

An entire layer of government – the townships – exists to deliver services that could be more efficiently managed by counties.  And at the county level, too many elected officials perform purely administrative tasks – like coroner, recorder, or surveyor – that should have nothing to do with partisan politics. 

Township government is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the system.  The major responsibility of township trustees is delivering poor relief.  But there’s no common standard or procedure for doing so.  Half the townships report serving less than twenty households, and the average trustee spends eight times more in overhead to deliver every dollar in direct assistance than a typical private charity (using the United Way of Central Indiana as a baseline).  I know at United Way we work very hard to keep our overhead down so that we can deliver resources to those in need.

The situation cries out for change.  But the lack of visibility of these offices insulates them from public scrutiny – most township officials run unopposed in general elections, attracting little attention from the citizens they profess to serve. 

Township government should be abolished altogether, or at the very least have their budgets overseen and approved by county councils to bring some accountability to their taxing and spending decisions.  Counties should have the option to consolidate administrative offices and adopt a single executive form of government.

Defenders of the status quo have defeated these proposals during the last two legislative sessions.  But this year could be different.  Governor Daniels is a strong advocate of reform, and the new majority in the House of Representatives may be willing to put their belief in smaller government into action.

These changes represent their own kind of innovation, the kind of change that’s long-overdue for a system designed in an age of travel by horseback rather than broadband communications.

Hill, managing partner of Collina Ventures, chairs the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership's TechPoint technology and entrepreneurship initiative.

In 2008, Indiana bucked national trends when it comes to venture capital investment – a silver lining in an otherwise cloudy economic picture.  According to the State Science & Technology Institute (SSTI):

“U.S. venture investment experienced its first yearly decline since 2003 last year, according a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers and National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) MoneyTree Report. The report finds that total investment dollars dropped eight percent in 2008, while deal volume decreased by four percent. A press release accompanying the announcement cited market insecurity and a slowdown in exits for the fourth-quarter declines that led to the lower numbers.”

But in Indiana, VC investment grew from $82.5M in 2007 to $123.6M in 2008, increasing our share of total U.S. venture dollars from .27% to .44% (based on deals tracked by NVCA).  Check out the Indiana data here: http://www.ssti.org/vc/indiana/all.php.

Strengthening Indiana’s entrepreneurial pipeline has always been a strategic priority for the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership.  In particular, BioCrossroads has played a critical role in expanding access to capital in the life sciences sector, raising nearly $80 million in dedicated venture funding for promising life sciences start-ups in the state and helping attract the attention of national VC firms to this traditionally under-served market.  Our TechPoint initiative has also promoted the importance of entrepreneurship through its Entrepreneurial Bootcamp programs, and its relationship with the HALO angel investment network is responsible for more than $7 million in early-stage funding being invested in new high-tech ventures in 2008.

In short, Indiana seems to be continuing our progress towards a more diverse, entrepreneurial economy.  This is excellent news, especially considering the current climate – as traditional expansion and relocation projects become more scarce in the midst of the recession, focusing on moving homegrown innovations to market becomes an even more important economic development strategy.