March 3, 2026

Podcast

Building a Tech Innovation Ecosystem in Newark

By Fay Cobb Payton, Lyneir Richardson, Lisa Margonelli

Innovation lately feels synonymous with the digital entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley or the high-tech corridor of Route 128 outside Boston. But when Thomas Edison opened his first research lab in the 1870s, it was in Newark, New Jersey. A few years later, in nearby Menlo Park, he invented the light bulb. Now, Newark is working to build a new, inclusive tech innovation ecosystem that goes beyond this legacy.


On this episode, host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Fay Cobb Payton and Lyneir Richardson, who are both at Rutgers University. Cobb Payton directs the Institute for Data, Research, and Innovation Science (IDRIS) and Lyneir is the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. Together they have been pioneering data-led innovation and business accelerators with a diverse group of entrepreneurs.

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Resources

Read Senator Andy Kim’s vision for New Jersey’s Einstein Corridor. 

Learn more about the Exit to Win accelerator by watching this video. 

Check out more Issues articles on regional economic development. 

Transcript

Lisa Margonelli: Welcome to The Ongoing Transformation, a podcast from Issues in Science and Technology. Issues is a quarterly journal published by the National Academy of Sciences and Arizona State University.

I’m Lisa Margonelli, editor-in-chief at Issues. On this episode, we’re exploring tech-led innovation and regional economic development. But we’re not talking about Silicon Valley or even Austin, Texas, or North Carolina’s research triangle. Instead, today we’re talking about Newark, New Jersey, which is working to build a new and inclusive tech ecosystem.

So today, I’m joined by Fay Cobb Payton and Lyneir Richardson, who are both at Rutgers University. Fay directs the Institute for Data, Research and Innovation Science, and Lyneir is the Executive Director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development. Together, they have been pioneering data-led innovation and business accelerators with a diverse group of entrepreneurs. Fay, Lyneir, Welcome.

Fay Cobb Payton: Well, thank you. Thanks for having us, Lisa.

Lyneir Richardson: My pleasure as well.

Margonelli: We have this amazing opportunity to talk about innovation as a driver of regional economic development, and the two of you just have this fascinating and very different experience. I wanted to start a little bit with some questions about Newark where you both are. So Lyneir, you’ve worked on urban economic development in Chicago. You were the chief executive officer of the Primary Economic Development Corporation in Newark, New Jersey for two different mayoral administrations, and now you’re the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers. Could you tell me what economic development has looked like in Newark over your decades in the city? How has the sort of feeling of the place changed?

Richardson: Newark has been on the cusp of change for 30 years. There have been a number of strategies related to attracting new businesses, attracting residents, supporting small business owners. And I think the economic development agenda has always centered on how to help people get resources, to grow, to expand. What’s the role of government in incentives and helping get approvals and changing perceptions to attract new people? And so it’s interesting now to be at Rutgers because the work is really connecting entrepreneurship and economic development, entrepreneurship and economic growth, inclusive entrepreneurship and inclusive economic development. And doing it in this context of Newark being so close to New York City has been something that’s been remarkably rewarding for me.

Margonelli: And so you’re bringing this entrepreneurial lens to the economic development. And Fay, you bring a really different lens. You’ve been working through academia and you’ve had a distinguished career as a data scientist at North Carolina State University and working on computer science at the National Science Foundation. You have an MBA. About two years ago, you came to Rutgers to be executive director of the Institute for Data, Research, and Innovation Science, which is called IDRIS at Rutgers, examining technical advances, particularly AI and their social and ethical implications. And what was your impression of Newark’s innovation ecosystem when you arrived in town?

Cobb Payton: I would say that it was one that was flourishing. It was one that was welcoming. It was one that had a story to tell that was across the river, across the bridge, across from New York City, but with a lot of momentum. And so my sense was particularly coming in to run the institute was that the state in and of itself was serious about this thing called tech and this innovation that could take place and that is taking place, right? And it was an investment to bolster the narrative and the story that happens in Newark, in particular, in New Jersey in general.

Margonelli: And does the innovation-driven economic development in Newark have a different ethos or feeling or objective than in Silicon Valley? Is it a little different than moving fast and breaking things?

Cobb Payton: It’s a very good question. I’m going to come at this from the perspective of someone who worked in Silicon Valley, because I actually worked in industry before going into higher ed, and the Silicon Valley approach is very vanilla in some senses of the word, at least in prior years. But I think in Newark, there’s room for differentiation. There’s room for ideation. There’s room for different ways of delivering, creating. And the people, the people are just gutsy, is that’s the only way I can describe it. There’s a stick-to-itness that is there in the city. Not saying that that’s not in Silicon Valley.

I think what we need to do is reimagine where Silicon Valley, where there are other Silicon Valleys. Right. And so one of the events that recently happened within IDRIS was our roadmap symposium with other institutes across the state of New Jersey. And Senator Kim was at the morning keynote, and he talked about the Einstein quarter, right, that exists in the state of New Jersey there in Newark, all of the creation and innovation that’s happening, but we kind of take it for granted, the light bulb, the pharma, those kinds of things that may not necessarily be as sexy in terms of technology. I think that’s Newark.

Richardson: And let me add, what I think is unique about Newark is there’s an intentional embrace of diverse entrepreneurs, first-generation entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs from low and moderate income backgrounds, and this intentional support systems to make it a place where people can access resources, people can find different mentors, the university system being patient in multi-year, multiphase type of programming. I remember when I first got to Newark, one of the things we were really proud of is there was a firm audible.com and a guy named Don Katz, who intentionally chose Newark for the company’s corporate headquarters and really sought to infuse what I often refer to as next economy entrepreneurship, next economy sort of innovation and a desire to find other companies that would benefit from Newark’s infrastructure, it’s proximity and again, it’s embrace of entrepreneurship and innovation in a very intentional way.

Margonelli: So how did you two start working together?

Richardson: We recruited Fay, we wanted her hard. They were like, “Man, this is a rockstar we want to hear, figure out a way to do something together.” And we’ve been shoulder to shoulder.Fay, is that too high of a summary? But we wanted you. And Fay has such an incredible background that when she expressed an interest in coming to Rutgers and being a thought partner, an action partner in Newark, it was a warm embrace immediately.

Margonelli: And Fay, you moved from a warm place like North Carolina to a kind of chilly place like New Jersey.

Cobb Payton: Kind of chilly place, right? But I think it was the people, right? So how did we start working together? And I will say it’s all about relationships. Right. So Lyneir and I, we kind of were shoulder to shoulder from the very beginning. And I was working frantically I remember one day, and I get this text or email that says, “I need to talk to you about something.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay, let’s talk.” And he brought the opportunity about how we could possibly collaborate together through IDRIS, through his Center of Urban Entrepreneurship, bring the two worlds together as opposed to having them separate and we could do more. And I agreed with them. And so this is how we started. The program that he launched was Exit to Win, which was phenomenal, phenomenal concept.

Margonelli: So Exit to Win is based on your analysis of what was going on at the regional or the local innovation ecosystem that you wanted to fix. So tell me first about the problem that you were seeing. What did you identify and how did you identify it?

Richardson: So we’ve been running entrepreneurship capacity building programs for almost two decades. And we initially started with just your mom and pop operators, just your brick and mortar operators. And a few years back, one of our professors who is now provost, a guy named Jeff Robinson, really started to do work around inclusive innovation, how to help entrepreneurs identify opportunities in growth sectors of the economy, how to help them find early stage capital, non-dilutive capital. And we found that there was real interest there, particularly as new angel investment funds, new venture capital funds were being formed. We ultimately focused in on the Exit to Win program because we found entrepreneurs with really promising ideas, building teams, even having revenue traction, but needing to understand what was required to get the next round of funding to continue to grow. And obviously tech and innovation companies are always looking for how do I get more capital to continue to advance the idea?

And that was really our focus. So we put together this training program with a very narrow niche, how to think about making the case for capital, what financial statements are required, what’s the investor’s perspective. And we’re now in working with IDRIS, trying to both document that sort of from a research base, and then ultimately to even create a playbook for other entrepreneurs who are really trying to figure out how do I go from a million dollars of annual recurring revenue to $10 million of annual recurring revenue to maybe a strategic partner, ultimately an exit, right, that will create wealth and create jobs in the region.

Cobb Payton: If I could add something there to that, I think one of the things in terms of looking at why the program, what was the problem to be solved, a lot of the entrepreneurship and innovation programs started the early stages. There are lots of programs for early stage, many venture, many large corp, many federal agency, all of that is at the beginning stages when you are ideating. Once you get into a launch and you do that first round with potentially growth potential, I think that there’s, I hate to use this word, but it comes to mind, there’s a void, there’s a gap, there’s a hole somewhere. And this Exit to Win program could fill that hole, that cavity of knowledge, infrastructure, know how, social networks to help move entrepreneurs beyond what the data are saying and into, as Lyneir mentioned, 10 million, 30 million, and then perhaps an exit. But as you say, to an exit to someone that’s starting something, sometimes that’s inconceivable and just not palatable for that person. So I think that’s part of the void also, particularly from a research perspective, what Exit to Win is doing.

Richardson: And these are real entrepreneurs. I mean, these people are operating tech, biotech, medical devices, premium consumer products and they’re actively out raising equity capital and showing year-over-year growth, some even hockey stick growth. And many of them are very diverse founders. So we wanted to address some of the common challenges, right? How do you talk to investors? How do you make the distinction between a growth business and a lifestyle business? How do you understand how people valuate, put a valuation on your business and what’s the right mindset and management team and partnership? We wanted a very laser focus on helping these growth sector entrepreneurs figure out how to grow.

Margonelli: I think it’s really interesting that you identified this void and it has meaning on two kind of different levels. One is the transition from people who may have an academic or research background into being entrepreneurs, and then from entrepreneurs to leaving behind that identity and moving to this other identity of a person who’s building a thing outside yourself. Entrepreneurs oftentimes identify heavily with what they’re doing, it’s necessary. And then the other stage is how do you say goodbye to this thing? So one is this sort of, the social aspect of it, I suppose, and how those skills are acquired.

And then the second thing is what that Exit to Win mindset can mean for an entire ecosystem. So maybe we could just start with sort of a individual picture. Many people have gone through research to entrepreneur bootcamps. There are many programs doing that early stage, as you say, Fay. In fact, it’s been a real focus at the national labs. It’s been a focus of NSF training. It’s been a focus for many universities at that early stage, like get people out of the lab or out of wherever and into this entrepreneurial mindset. And yet that ownership thing, in order to get to the next level, you need to push that away. You need to think in a different way. So can you talk a little bit about what that transformation is at the individual or social level? And then we can talk about the ecosystem level.

Richardson: So for us, it was these are people operating businesses out making pitches for capital, and they’ve gotten beyond. It’s just that the customer discovery, they’re generating revenue. So the question became, how do you understand what an exit really means? Valuation fundamentals. What’s the strategy? How do you do the financial modeling? What’s the milestones and how do you communicate where you are in the process? I always talk about businesses being the narrative and the numbers. So what’s the narrative that we’re telling, the financial storytelling, but also what is the actual financial presentation? And so that was the goal of the program, is to really define success as people understanding what an exit means. They can develop a mindset. They have a stronger sense of the financial storytelling and financial acumen needed that will ultimately allow them to either raise their next round of capital, find a strategic partner, or ultimately have that big exit.

Cobb Payton: And I would describe it at the individual level. It’s really a mindset, perhaps a shift in identity, but it’s also understanding the language, being able to speak the language. But I think important in Exit to Win was even when you have that language, there still can be barriers. So the mentoring, the intentional pairing of the mentors throughout this journey has been, I would say, top tier, but the entrepreneurs have to balance being an entrepreneur and leveraging, actively leveraging that mentorship. Because you’re doing the day-to-day operations or you’re running or you’re pitching or you’re looking at the sales number, you’re driving this, you’re driving that, but then there’s this mentor that has that know how and can help you work through some of the barriers and scenarios that may exist. So it is also an identity, but also leveraging part of the resources that were provided throughout the program, throughout the journey.

Richardson: And if I can double-click on the mentors, I mean, we spent real specific time trying to find the ideal mentor, right, someone that had strong financial acumen. Again, this is a lot about not just the idea, but how do you tell the financial story, mentors that had experience partnering with founders and helping them in fundraising strategies and investor readiness type of outreach efforts. People that could help people develop proforma that were reality-based, right, and you would meet investor expectations, exciting enough to get people interested, but not so pie in the sky that were not believable.

And then for entrepreneurs, I think understanding what win-win really meant, both for investors and founders. Obviously, there’s some tension. How much of my company do I need to get up? You see that tension sometimes on Shark Tank, right, where people are like, “Well, I’ll give you 10% of my company for $2 million.” And someone’s like, “Oh, that gives you valuation too high. It should be 30% for $2 million.” So understanding what win really means for investors and founders. And so a lot of that was about mentors who understood how to help entrepreneurs understand blind spots and could guide them in a way that would strengthen their financials and coach them through the process.

Cobb Payton: And that Shark Tank analogy, right, in some ways you bring the entrepreneurs into the tank. In some ways we’re saying, look outside the tank, right, look outside the tank. And perhaps the shark is a little different. It poses a little different. And I want to also reiterate something that you mentioned, Lisa, is you said, well, the entrepreneurs are actually doing this exit and exit means different things. It’s not binary. It’s not you’re in or out. There are different ways of exiting, but still being involved. And we had mentors that had experience with that, explaining that and coaching through that process.

Margonelli: So it seems to me that you’re coaching individuals, but you’re also kind of creating a network between the mentors and the entrepreneurs and perhaps people who are coming up who aren’t entrepreneurs yet as sort of a shared understanding of what this innovation ecosystem looks like, what the playbook is for moving through it. And I wonder if you can talk about helping people think about the exits and forming these networks. How does that change the ecosystem itself?

Cobb Payton: I’d say one of the ways that it changes the ecosystem is that you create almost a community of practice and you create a community of practice of ingenuity, of learners. And need, I say the entrepreneurs of mentors, of VCs, investors in research, and you have this whole new sort of community of practice that exists. And what was interesting is that there was a lot of cross-learning amongst the entrepreneurs themselves. Entrepreneurship sometimes is seen as a very individualistic, it’s on an individual. This is a collectivist model. Right. This is the collectivist model where we say, these are the resources, these are the networks of social and technical ties to entrepreneurship to Exit to Win. So I think you create something that is less about the individual and more about an ecosystem that people can tap into. And to see that learning in real time is quite amazing because there were epiphanies that happened throughout the course.

Richardson: And for me, even broader than the course. We run a number of capacity building programs. We run programs for creatives, artists and filmmakers and bloggers who we wanted them to think about their creative work as entrepreneurship, how to build a business around it. And I said, we’ve built a number of brick and mortar businesses that, the everyday entrepreneur, the ice cream shop, the restaurant. For me, what’s interesting about this inclusive innovation work, it’s another set of entrepreneurs, it’s a growth engine for our economy. And so for me, I’m very hopeful that one or more of the entrepreneurs here are really going to build $100 million company and really create jobs and new opportunities in a way that the small restaurant, which is just as valuable in this ecosystem will not. Right. And so this is, how do we help people get capital to really grow? That’s an real specific focus. I have an innovation. Where do I go? Who do I partner with? How do I tell the story? That’s adding to the menu of capacity building programs that we offer at Rutgers.

Margonelli: It’s also offers an opportunity to scale ideas, big ideas. So for example, Fay’s work with IDRIS in the state of New Jersey on AI, and how do you examine the ethics of AI, how to create positive outcomes in the world and build community. And so building entrepreneurial ecosystems then would seem to give some opportunity to scale business ideas that recognize important social values or important ethical issues.

Cobb Payton: Exactly. Right. And I think that’s the whole point of this, is I sort of liken my experience. Right. This Exit to Win was 1.0. We are gathering data or have gathered data to see what a 2.0 would look like. And the opportunity to scale is critical, particularly if we’re going to make the case for economic development. That’s just how the models are, whether they’re inclusive, whether they’re innovation, whatever it’s going to be, we’re going to have to show and demonstrate some proof of concept, right, and that this is scalable in some capacity. And we hope certainly that we’ll be able to point to someone from the cohort that said, “Ah, that was 50 million. Oh, that was 100 million. Oh, that person actually exited, but started something different.” Because there were examples of entrepreneurs, correct me if I’m wrong, Lyneir, but I clearly remember a few cases where there are entrepreneurs that are entrepreneuring again. Right.

They’re not a one-time shop from time to time. What also is important in this idea of scaling is taking the creative, taking the lifestyle brand, making it an actual scaling of something much larger. But what is also critical is finding ways so that they can feel this sense of they can tap into this ecosystem of research, other entrepreneurs, the resources through the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship. And they may not necessarily be tech, Lisa. They may be tech enabled. And I think that’s what we have to embrace when we’re talking about this inclusive model of entrepreneurship.

Richardson: And let me add, the thing that has been a linchpin in our programs have been we’ve always focused on the money. So in many programs, particularly programs at higher education institutions, it’s about the knowledge transfer. And about five years ago, we were running programs, we won awards, international awards, university awards, grant awards, I started feeling like, well, capacity building program for no capital is like workforce development training with no job at the end. So here we had a pretty substantial prize. One of the entrepreneurs received $20,000 of non-dilutive capital. We have an angel investment fund that is investing between 50 and $150,000 in early stage companies. Connecting those entrepreneurs to other angel and accelerators and venture capital firms in the area, that real focus on how do you get capital in addition to the knowledge transfer is something I’m very proud of in the work.

Margonelli: I think that’s really interesting. And the universities have so focused on the knowledge transfer aspect of it.

Cobb Payton: Absolutely. But sometimes the knowledge transfer isn’t translatable, right, in a university context, given how universities operate, which is very different than how some of the funders or angels may operate, which is very different than what the pressures for what entrepreneurs themselves were on the ground who are doing this. So you have, I think in this program, what we tried to do is at least align people for the time period and align them to the awareness of getting the financials in place, being able to tell the story and recognize it. And some of them said, “This is really hard.” That’s okay. We wanted them to know it is hard, but it can be done, can be done.

Margonelli: I think one of the things that’s interesting about New Jersey in particular is you have this history of having very intense innovation ecosystems that are quite different than the way we conceive of Silicon Valley now. So you had Edison and his lab, and he had 10,000 people at one of his labs in New Jersey furiously working on variations on the light bulb and all the stuff that he had. Then you had Bell labs, you had chemistry, pharmaceuticals. I was looking up some things that came out of New Jersey and there’s toothpaste, Teflon, synthetic vitamin C, Campbell’s soup, submarines, and fax machines. And there’s just like, there’s this wild mixture. And many of those had sort of individual innovation ecosystems. Bell Labs had sort of a circle of places around it. The submarines and the marine cables and the people designing locomotives, they all had another separate ecosystem. In this tech world, as you’re thinking about an ecosystem, it sounds like you could kind of move between restaurant and AI. There’s a new kind of thinking that you’re seeing or practicing. Is that true?

Cobb Payton: That’s true. I think it’s unhinged, right? AI is everywhere. We’ve seen, and we definitely talk to some of the entrepreneurs, whether it’s AI or tech enablement or digital transformation, these entrepreneurs may have started out, I’ll just give a very quick example, one that stood out to me, started out as laundry delivery. Now, clearly that person now is a logistics operation because of his or her use of AI and technology and have allowed the entrepreneur to scale in a way that was unimaginable when they first started. And so the ability to be able to embrace the tech, but not necessarily consider yourself a tech firm, but a tech enabled firm, a futuristic firm, I think in ways that will allow you to scale, grow, and generate revenue, I think is compelling. And so instead of putting a box around it, whatever that AI, you unleash it and you make it adaptable and available to those that are interested and that choose.

Richardson: That’s next economy. I’ve always had this idea of a book titled NEED: Next Economy, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development, and really leveraging all of the technology tools and connecting with growth sectors in our economy. That’s next. Right. And that’s entrepreneurship and economic development on steroids when you can leverage tech and connect with growth sectors.

Margonelli: And you can use a very local innovation ecosystem to do global things as well.

Cobb Payton: That’s right. Exactly.

Richardson: This is a old example, but it was such a fun program. We launched a program in connection with the Public Housing Authority in Newark a few years back where there were all of these makers who would do crafts and they would take them to the local fair, candle makers, or they’d make jewelry or various neck ties. And we had this innovative partnership with Etsy that we identified an Etsy entrepreneur who actually helped these local public housing residents open Etsy stores. So they now are not just selling their candles and jewelry and clothing items at the local fair. They now were selling them globally because they were using the technology and they actually opened an Etsy store. So that type of work, and we did some research around it. So combining research with capital, with tech, with on the ground experience to foster entrepreneurship and economic development in urban communities like Newark.That’s why I wake up every day.

Margonelli: Thank you, Lyneir and Fay. This was a really great conversation.

Richardson: Thank you all. Thank you all.

Cobb Payton: Thank you.

Margonelli: Thank you. To learn more about Fay and Lyneir’s work, empowering innovation in Newark, check out our show notes. You’ll also find other essays about building regional tech economies that reflect the values of the people who live there. Please subscribe to The Ongoing Transformation wherever you get your podcasts and write to us at podcast@issues.org. Thanks to our podcast producer, Kimberly Quach and our audio engineer, Shannon Lynch. I’m Lisa Margonelli, editor-in-chief at Issues. Thank you for listening.

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Cite this Article

Cobb Payton, Fay, Lyneir Richardson, and Lisa Margonelli. “Building a Tech Innovation Ecosystem in Newark.” Issues in Science and Technology (March 3, 2026).