SUMMARY
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Maximizing Economic Benefit through Research, Innovation, Technology Transfer, Commercialization, and Global Partnerships
Dr. Eli Opper was today’s presenter as a first of a series of presenters for Maximizing Economic Benefit through Research, Innovation, Technology Transfer, Commercialization, and Global Partnerships. He
was able to enlighten us all with the impressive and inspiring work
that Israel is currently doing in R&D and Innovative technology.
He
began his talk simply by giving us a variety of numbers and figures
representing the world’s situation today. Of these included the fact
that 1.1 billion people are without water in the world. So this proves
that “we know what we need to do, not if we need to do it.”
Dr. Opper then began to speak on the point that Israel has the 3rd
largest VC service in the word with $105M invested into 219 projects in
the year 2007. They have 4.6% expenditure on civilian GDP in Israel and
in OECD Countries. They are very competitive in technological relevance
with 140 of 10000 workers categorized as scientists and/or
technicians. They are ranked as #1 in medical device patents per capita
and #4 in number of total patents per capita.
Obviously
a drawback to the wealth of success in Israel’s research, innovation,
and technology transfer is that when you are trying to look for
funding, it becomes difficult when you are at the top of the
ladder. But Dr. Opper mentioned that “if you want real growth, you have
to have new technologies, because Innovation is equal to economical
growth.”
Currently
Israel has a lot of research directed towards defense technology, but
with this comes many applications towards other sectors of
research. They have many incubators, most of which are
privatized. There are 24 Incubators, one of which is a Biotech
Incubator, with 8-10 projects in each. A difference between the
incubators in Israel versus the ones in Canada is that Israel
incubators are for the most part only structured buildings with professional management versus being university labs or stations.
The
Preferred sectors for research in Israel are biotechnology and
nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is one sector that they want to
emphasize as a tool for water desalination and purification. Newer
sectors include traditional industry that focuses from low tech to high end where “high end” expresses competitiveness, not technology.
Finally,
Dr. Opper mentioned the number of international cooperators Israel has,
and the goal is to work on the same R&D projects because, as Dr.
Opper stated it, “there is always room for improvement and excellence
is the key to success”.
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