Israel’s Innovation Authority … from startup to smart-up nation via AI

“The State of Israel is facing significant challenges in the field of innovation during a period in which artificial intelligence is establishing itself as the central technological platform of our generation”, is the introduction for this year’s overview by Chairman Appelbaum and CEO Aharon.

As such, the latest report focuses on the transition from “startup to smart-up nation”. Of course, there were plenty of smart investments to go around last year, as shown below:

Israel’s five-year strategic plan focuses on ten primary goals:

– future technologies

– startup assistance

– new ecosystems and communities

– skilled high-tech human capital

– growth of complete technology companies

– multi-national companies’ R&D center support

– focus on manufacturing industry

– emerging tech for the entire business sector

– innovative tech solutions for societal challenges

– technological innovation at the periphery

Unlike many other countries, a key trait of the 2018 development was much greater collaboration between government departments.

In addition to the collaboration internally and across departments, some of the international collaborations in 2018 included: a collaboration with particle accelerator CERN to transfer knowledge to companies in Israel; commercialization of academic knowledge in the field of quantum technologies through the European collaboration program Quantera; funding for Israeli companies collaborating with German companies and research institutes in the field of nanotechnology.

A couple of interesting case studies mentioned in the report are below: