Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) threw open the doors and cracked champagne at last night’s grand opening of its new Innovation Center, a modest 9,000-sqaure-foot space in Cambridge, Mass., it calls a "hotbed for life science innovation."

The grand opening, which featured caricature artists, performers and life-sized statues of famous scientists, sent a message about the kind of collaborative, open-door policy the Innovation Center hopes to foster between business, academia and early-stage product developers.

J&J pulled in the new Innovation Center’s leader, Robert Urban, from nearby MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The company and Urban emphasized that the new space is not only a heat-seeking missile for pipeline technologies, but also a fostering home for early-stage biotech companies looking to get their products off the ground.

“We hope to make it simply much easier for innovators anywhere to begin to understand there is a mechanism by which [they] can collaborate with J&J,” Urban told Xconomy.

J&J said it’s already inked deals with 2 local private biotechs in the Bay State, Rodin Therapeutics and Vedanta Biosciences, as well as with the LabCentral non-profit and a research center at Mount Sinai in New York.

The Kendall Square Innovation Center is 1 of 4 incubators J&J is opening in Shanghai, San Francisco and London.