Who are New Jersey's real business leaders?

Tom Paine

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I was looking over NJBIZ.com's "The NJBIZ Power 100: The most powerful people in New Jersey business" for 2015. I wonder if this is an actual reflection of the state of business in The Garden State, and if so perhaps its a reason why its not in the greatest shape.

The majority of people named are various public officials, attorneys, and lobbyists. Most of the business executives run regulated utilities or other organizations with state ties. Besides a sprinkling of major Pharma execs and a few Jersey mainstays such as Campbells, I see little evidence of business leadership being represented. I only count perhaps four tech execs and two who I would call successful tech entrepreneurs. Nobody directly from the VC or PE communities I can spot.

There is no Marc Lore (ex-Quidsi, now Jet.com), Chris Sugden (Edison Partners), Jim Preuninger (Amber Road), Stephen Waldis (Synchronoss), N. Robert Hammer (CommVault) and Thai Lee (SHI), just to name a few. Nor are any of the brilliant researchers at the universities and research labs working on breakthroughs in areas such as photonics and quantum computing represented.

Follow up: NJ ranks at bottom of job growth list (The Daily Journal)

Links 1/28/2015: Spark Therapeutics increases proposed IPO deal size by 48%; LiquidHub Accelerates Growth with Acquisition of Two Salesforce Partners

It's electric: [CHOP spinout] Spark Therapeutics increases proposed IPO deal size by 48% to $130 million (Renaissance Capital)

CommScope to Buy TE Connectivity Unit for $3 Billion (New York Times: DealBook)
Though legally domiciled in Switzerland, TE Connectivity's corporate offices are in Berwyn.

LiquidHub Accelerates Growth with Acquisition of Two Salesforce Partners (Business Wire)

Behind the deal: how ClosedWon went from tech tidbit to takeover target (Albuquerque Business First)




Tons of AT&T and Verizon customers may no longer have “broadband” tomorrow (Ars Technica)

Activist Elliott Said to Plan Push for Informatica LBO, Sale (Bloomberg)
What Informatica does around Master Data Management (MDM) is important to several other software and SaaS vendors.


Cloud ERP: 9 Emerging Options (Information Week)

IBM may be preparing for a round of job cuts (Computerworld)