So Long Israel

It's a bittersweet moment as today marks our last day in Israel.  On the one hand we're excited: we came here to build businesses and learn about the Startup Nation in person.  Just a few days ago we pitched our ventures in what was truly the culmination of this experience.  So as we leave Israel, we know that our departure signifies the accomplishment of the task that we set out to complete.  We can all look back on the last two months and know that we got so much from this experience.  We took an idea and turned it into a business, which is no small feat.  Throughout the process, we became master of the elevator pitch, market sizing gurus and all too well acquainted with PowerPoint's features.  

But our time here in Israel means so much more than the business skills, professional development and important people we met.  Two months ago, twelve MBA's from four different universities arrived in Israel, many of us as total strangers.  We spent nearly every moment over the course of the ensuing 8 weeks together, working, playing and living.  When we board our respective airplanes today at Ben Gurion Airport we will never again be strangers because we shared together the experience of a lifetime.  From waking up to this beautiful view out our window:

to sharing our professional and personal goals on long bus drives across the country to visit a company or attend an industry conference, to the amazing Masada sunrise:

we have all grown together in ways we never though imaginable.

At the beginning of the trip, Asher Epstein explained his philosophy on expectations: "set low expectations and over-deliver."  Well, Asher, over-deliver doesn't even begin to describe it.  This has truly been the experience of a lifetime.  Every single one of has has grown professionally and personally, we've seen and done some amazing things, and if nothing else we are walking away with a deep appreciation for this beautiful country.

So long Israel.  It's been wonderful, and I'm sure it won't be the last time.

We Did It

Eight weeks ago we arrived in Haifa, Israel with the goal of building businesses out of Technion-developed technology.  We've met with business leaders, incubator directors, venture capitalists and industry experts; we've pitched our ventures every week and received tough but important feedback; and we've had access to industry advisors and mentors whose experiences in entrepreneurship have helped us navigate the intricacies of our own industries.

Last night was the culmination of this process, as we pitched our ventures to venture capitalists from top firms such as Bessemer, Sequoia and Giza.  Simply the opportunity to pitch business plans to top VC's is great, but after eight weeks of immersing ourselves in our ventures it was nothing short of impressive.  All six of our international venture teams presented eloquently, expressing the problems our businesses solve, the markets they address and the the amount of funding required to make them profitable.  We fielded tough questions from the panel of VC's, but after two months of habituation we were perfectly accustomed to the Israeli style of questioning.

Looking back on what we've accomplished, I am very impressed by our collective progress.  Eight weeks ago we were presented with technologies in fields ranging from medical diagnostics to imaging and chemical analysis.  We've taken these scientific innovations and built real business ventures out of them.  The experience of building a business is truly priceless, and not something that many people can say they have done.  From solving the problems we've encountered along the way to understanding the motivations and thought processes of venture capitalists who fund our ventures, we now posses the tools and experiences of seasoned entrepreneurs.

The Dingman-Technion Entrepreneurship
teams after our final pitches

The New Silicon Valley

Back in May I posted about why we were coming to Israel and what we would be doing.  For those of you who have followed us these past two months, you've seen some of the great things we've done, companies we've met with, and an insight to the projects we're working on.  When we return home and complete our second year of business school, one question with which we will be regularly confronted is: Why Israel?

A recent Yahoo! News article highlights the answer to this question better than I could.  Titled "Israeli innovators build new 'Silicon Valley'", our work this summer has been focused on just that.  In a country where 500 new startups form every year, our group of twelve MBA's from Maryland, Harvard, Emory and Peking University have have worked to build six companies of our own.  We're not engineers or scientists - Israel has plenty of those (indeed Israel is home to more engineers per capita than any country in the world).  Rather, we are filling an important gap in the Israeli economy, taking innovations and building well-managed business around them.

This Thursday we will put our last seven weeks of preparation to the test, pitching our businesses to representatives from some of the world's top venture capital firms.  We will seek to raise funding for our own startups as we play a role in building the "New Silicon Valley" that is the Startup Nation.

Tel Aviv Company Visits

Much has been made of the laid back business culture of Israel.  Sandals and untucked shirts are as much the norm as neckties are uncommon.  But despite Israel’s casual approach to business our full slate of company visits last Monday was anything but laid back.  With an aggressive schedule that started in Tel Aviv suburb Herzeliya at 9:00 AM and ended 10 hours later in Ceasaria, we met the full spectrum of Israeli business.

Better Place

The morning began with one of the stars of Israeli innovation: Better Place.  Founded with the mission of ending oil dependence, this company has taken the vision of electric cars beyond just hybrid and plug-in electrics by envisioning an entire infrastructure of battery switch stations.  In addition to the network of battery switch stations, Better Place actually purchases and maintains the car battery for the consumer, removing an expensive barrier for many electric car customers.  Better Place has begun to roll out their network in Israel, Denmark and Australia but will need to expand into larger markets to repay the billion dollars of funding their founder Shai Agassi has raised.  With the world finally realizing that oil cannot be the answer in the long run, it’s safe to say they have a head start on the competition in an industry that can do nothing but grow.

Rainbow Medical

With so many of our teammates pitching ventures in the bio medical industry, meeting the management of a company that specializes in seeding and growing medical technologies provided some great insight for our own projects and upcoming venture capitalist pitches.  Of their portfolio technologies, Rainbow showed off the Nano Retina, an implantable chip that restores sight to people who have gone blind due to acute macular degeneration.  What felt like something taken from a science fiction movie is currently being tested in animals and is one year from human trials.

Benchmark Capital

Whenever an entrepreneur has a chance to network with top tier venture capitalists, he or she must capitalize on the opportunity.  At Benchmark, we did just that, talking to venture capitalists on the current state of their industry, both in Israel and the US.  Before concluding the meeting, we of course took the opportunity to pitch our own ventures and gain valuable feedback from an experienced business builder.

Aqwise

While not always the hottest industry, water treatment is not only of utmost importance to the desert dwelling Israelis, but will soon be a concern for the entire world.  At Aqwise, innovation has transformed a sewage treatment company into a cleantech leader, as this Israeli company now treats a quantity of water in 8 hours that used to take 10 days.  With the obvious benefits of their technological solution, Aqwise is now global, counting the likes of Walmart and Coca-Cola as customers.

Microsoft

Employing 600 people in their Herzeliya research and development facility, Microsoft has marked Israel as a key asset in their drive to innovate and constantly reinvent themselves.  In meeting the management of their Innovation Labs, we saw first-hand how they create value by improving on and redefining Microsoft’s existing current product line.  And more importantly, we saw some of the new management techniques that Microsoft is employing to encourage innovation and outside the box thinking as a part of its larger strategic goal of remaining relevant in a rapidly evolving marketplace.  Whether we go into the high tech industry or not, their innovative techniques such as Out of the Box Week are implementable anywhere.

Emefcy

On our way back to Haifa from Tel Aviv we made on last stop in Ceasarea to visit new water technology startup Emefcy.  This company has developed the technology to not only eliminate energy consumption used in waste water treatment but in some case leverage the treatment process to generate electricity.  The paradigm shift that results from their innovation has clearly caught the eye of industry, as they recently announced an investment from General Electric.

Final Stretch

After an inspiring talk from Bessemer Partner Adam Fisher, last night we presented our financial projections and sales models to venture capitalists.  This was our last preparatory presentation before making our full sales pitch to a panel of Israel's top venture capitalists next Thursday night.  In order to make a proper fundraising pitch, we've spent the past seven weeks building up to this point.  From week to week we've studied and pitched on all aspects of our venture, each pitch building on the lessons learned the week before.

Seven weeks ago we started with our technologies and thought outside the box to build commercial applications around them.  From there we developed an understanding of the potential market sizes that our businesses could address and how our business models fit into them.  After understanding our markets, we heard from guest lecturers and then made our own presentations on the intellectual property on which our business are built and how to best protect and leverage it in our ventures.  At this point, we began to drill down to specific business-level aspects of our ventures, ranging from research and development plans, our value chain location and how to address the needs of our potential customers and partners.

In the last two weeks we've focused on the final steps of commercialization: the go to market strategy, marketing activities and our sales plan.  These specific actions allowed us to finally put financial numbers and projections behind our pitches and demonstrate not only how much money we stand to gain, but also how much funding we need to raise to get there.  With one more week to synthesize everything we've done and build a fundraising pitch to real investors, we have our work cut out for us.

Galilee

As I mentioned in a previous post, we recently had the opportunity to visit the northern part of Israel to meet with some of the more interesting companies in the country.  What I didn't mentioned in that post is that between all of the work, we found some time to take in the beautiful sights and scenery of the Galilee region.

Our first stop along this journey was the city of Safed.  At nearly 3,000 feet of above sea level, this city provides views over the countryside below filled with vineyards and dotted by pine trees.  Dating as far back as its biblical references, Safed serves as one of Judaism's four holy cities, which is noticeable from first arrival.  Walking the shop-lined cobbled streets of the old city, one feels as though he were transported back in time.

The team exploring Safed

After Safed, our next stop along the journey into the North was a rafting trip along the Jordan River.  Relaxing on inflatable rafts and kayaks, we paddled (or in some cases just floated) down the shady and tree-lined Jordan River which feeds the Sea of Galilee.

Once we completed our trip down the Jordan, we headed towards our hotel at Kibutz Ha'on. Nestled on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee, our accommodations faced west across the Sea towards Tiberias, making for an unforgettable sunset.

Galilee sunset

The next morning we were up early to tour a few of the countless holy sites surrounding the Sea of Galilee.  From churches:

The Church of the Beatitudes

to ancient ruins:

we took in the best sites that the Galilee has to offer.  We capped off our Galilee experience with some excellent hiking with great views of the entire region:

and an offroad jeep tour of the surrounding countryside:

After this weekend, we all came away with a deep appreciation of the history and natural beauty of the Galilee Region.  Warm and sunny by day, cool and quiet by night, and home to some of Israel's most hospitable people, I believe we are all eager to one day return.

Biotechnology and Food Engineering

As a part of our work at the Technion we from time to time have the opportunity to visit some of the cutting edge laboratories here to meet with Technion faculty and researchers.  Today, we visited the brand new facilities of the Biotechnology and Food Engineering Faculty housed in the Carol B. Epstein Building at the Technion.  There, we met with two brilliant professors, Esther Meyron Holtz and Uri Lesmes, who gave us an overview of their research.

Dr. Holtz prefaced her presentation to us by disclaiming the fact that she is first and foremost a researcher and that her work is therefore intended to further academic understanding and not to produce commercially viable products. With a room full of MBA students currently engaged in technology transfer, this provided us an opportunity to listen to her research through the lens of tech transfer professionals and provide feedback on potential commercial applications for the breakthroughs coming from her laboratory.

Focusing primarily on the role of iron in the body, Dr. Holtz's work has produced considerable insights into the understanding of free radicals in the body and the resulting oxidative stress that causes the human body to age.  With continued research on this topic, it is possible that her work could result in treatments for Chrohn's Disease, osteoperosis, cancer, neurodegeneration, insulin resistance and coronary heart disease.  As MBA students, we expressed to Dr. Holtz the enormous market potential of her work and encouraged her to seek intellectual property protection around which people like us could one day build businesses.

Then we heard from Dr. Uri Lesmes whose work involves the development of new techniques to produce healthier foods on an industrial scale.  With obesity reaching pandemic proportions there is a dire need to develop health foods that are not only appealing to the consumer but also affordable and commercially viable.  Much of Dr. Lesmes' work involves investigation into emulsion digestion whereby altering the chemistry of specific foods greatly affects the lipid digestion in humans.  The goal of such research is to develop emulsified foods that taste the same but result in less caloric absorption by the body.  In other word, Dr. Lesmes, asked, "Who wouldn't want to eat an ice cream that tastes the same but has half the calories?" We immediately understood that the social value and commercial value of such a breakthrough would be enormous, not to mention delicious.

At the Biotechnology and Food Engineering Faculty

North Company Visits

This past weekend the team completed our Tour of Israel with a trip to the northern regions of Galilee and Golan Heights.  While there, we had the opportunity to meet executives at two of Israel's more exciting companies: Amiad and the Misgav Venture Accelerator.

Amiad

With the world's population rapidly expanding in areas already challenged by substandard access to clean water, it has become clear that the problem that my generation will be charged with solving is how to provide water to a world population that will exceed 7 billion by the end of this decade.  In a country where water is an issue of national security, it is no surprise that one of the world's most innovative water filtration companies has come out of Israel.  By providing customized solutions that last a lifetime, Amiad deploys its filtration products across the globe to meet the needs of small African villages and growing metropolises alike.  In meeting with their management and touring their facilities, our team left Amiad quite impressed by their innovative approach to tackling this timeless problem.

Misgav Venture Accelerator

An incubator run the by Trendlines Group, the Misgav Venture Accelerator is focused on building businesses out of life science technologies that seek to improve the human condition.  Awarded "Best Incubator" by Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist, Misgav is clearly doing something right.  Their CEO and Chairman Steve Rhodes walked the team through the Israeli incubator program and discussed its merits and recent successes.  By providing mentoring, office support and collaboration among like-minded entrepreneurs, Misgav has shown great promise in creating such  innovative companies as ETView and Endo Grab.  Their innovations save on healthcare costs and improve healthcare delivery in such a manner that the end user and the healthcare provider both benefit.  Before concluding our meeting, we all had the opportunity to pitch the companies we are building at the Technion and receive valuable feedback from experienced venture executive and long time business builder Steve Rhodes, an honor of which many an entrepreneur would be jealous.

Masada and Dead Sea

A little while ago I posted about our trip to the Bedouin Camp in Southeast Israel.  Where the Bedouin Experience left off, a sunrise hike up the ancient and holy site of Masada and a swim on top of the Dead Sea picked up.

Our day began with a wakeup call around 4 AM.  Not entirely accustomed to our desert accommodations, the team groggily gathered around morning coffee before driving 20 KM east to Masada.  Originally fortified by Herod the Great, this mountaintop construction provides a commanding and impressive view over the Dead Sea below and Jordan to the East.  To reach the top of this plateau, we hiked up the Roman Ramp Path that winds up the rear of the facade:

Hiking up Masada before sunrise

Once there, we watched a beautiful sunrise over the Dead Sea that was certainly worth the early wakeup call:

Masada sunrise overlooking the Dead Sea

Once the sun was up, we toured around this 2000 year old site that holds as much historical importance as cultural and religious significance to the Jewish people.

Columns hint at Masada's Roman influence

After a morning full of hiking and walking around in the sun, we relaxed on the Dead Sea, one of Israel's most iconic and memorable attractions.  The lowest place on earth collects salt and mineral runoff from the surrounding hills, leaving it with a salt content that makes it almost impossible not to float on.  With its mud's famed curative properties and views looking up to Masada and off to Jordan across the Sea, no visit to Israel is complete without an experience like this one.

Relaxing on the Dead Sea

First Video

Our talented photographer and videographer, Jay Zhang, has created and posted the first video of our trip, providing an overview of the program and introducing a number of the team members.  With beautiful photographs from Jay, Marc Terada and Ken Chen, plus videos from Julie Mullins, the first in our series of videos features some of our early travels, meetings and accomplishments.  Check it out below or here: http://youtu.be/E10i8Sfinqc.  And watch this space for more video updates from Jay.

Halfway Point

We’re now officially more than one month into the Israeli experience, and what a time it has been.  We’ve met the President, slept in Bedouin tents and hobnobbed at high tech and biomedical conferences.  Given this incredible diversity of opportunities, this blog has been largely dedicated to these amazing experiences.  Amid all of this, we’ve engrossed ourselves in six different technology commercialization projects.  What started as patented technologies have evolved into very strong business models.  We still have a long ways to go, but the feedback from venture capitalists, experts in the field, and of course Asher Epstein and Ze’ev Ganor, will no doubt help us get there.

On our first full day in Israel, we met the inventors of our technologies and our Israeli teammates.  In one short week we scrambled to meet with everyone we could, from the inventor and his or her colleagues to anyone with relevant experience in the field, in order to better understand our technologies and how to apply them in the marketplace.  From there, we’ve narrowed down our list of commercial applications from five to one and honed in on real market size estimates.  From our presentation skills to our business plans, every single individual has made marked and noticeable improvements over the last month.  The venture capitalists continue to poke holes in our arguments, assumptions and models, and we take this feedback into account every week.

While we are still a long ways from launching a business, we are beginning to see the fruits of our labor.  Our first presentations demonstrated how little we knew about our technologies, the industry in which we planed to commercialize them and the details of the intellectual property that protects them.  Since then, we have all become experts on our patents, performed extensive industry analyses, and become quite accustomed to the tough line of questioning that we receive during and after our presentations.  Our presentation slides are polished and professional and where it once took five minutes to explain our technology, we now have the pitch down to 30 seconds.

From financial projections to the final business plan, there is much work yet to be done prior to our final venture capitalist pitches on July 7^th.  With the training and mentoring we are receiving, I am confident we will get there.

Bedouin Experience

While on our trip to Jerusalem a few weeks ago, we immersed ourselves in the local culture, met some exciting businesses, and attended a high tech conference. Somewhere in the middle of all this, we managed to sneak away and have a little fun in Southern Israel.

Our first stop along this excursion was at a Bedouin camp near Arad. The Bedouin camp now serves as not only the home for the Bedouins who live in the area but also a cultural experience for travelers such as ourselves hoping to gain a little insight into this nomadic culture. Located in a desert oasis, the place is nothing short of beautiful. 

The team entering the Bedouin oasis

While there, we were treated to traditional Bedouin hospitality and storytelling. Our host ground fresh coffee beans for us and treated us to several blends that even a devout tea drinker found delicious.

Our Bedouin host grinding coffee beans in traditional fashion

Our host explained to us the history of the Bedouin people in Israel and how their culture fits into the modern State of Israel. As desert dwellers who have survived as nomads in this harsh landscape for years, the Bedouins' skills serve as valuable assets even in a modern world that has relegated their nomadic lifestyle more of a relic of the past. Currently, many Bedouins serve in the Israel Defense Force as desert trackers. Our host claimed that a true Bedouin is still much more effective than any modern technology when it comes to understanding the intricacies of the desert terrain, and based on his stories, I have no reason to doubt him.

And of course, no trip to a Bedouin camp would be complete without a sunset camel ride to experience get the full Bedouin experience:

The team riding through the desert

Ken and Femi looking right at home on their transportation

After our camel ride, our hosts graciously welcomed us into their tents and prepared a delicious traditional style dinner for us.  Consisting of chicken and various kebab-style grilled meats over rice with fresh-baked breads, we ate family style on the floor in Bedouin fashion.

Amos, Lisa and Jonathan eating a Bedouin dinner

The Daily Grind

We've been in Israel for about a month now, and one question that we consistently receive from readers of this blog, friends and family, and Israelis alike is: what exactly are you doing in Israel? The nature of our project was broadly defined in our first blog post, and I have done my best to update on the most salient and exciting trips, meetings and events. And while our busy schedule has meant that no two days in Israel are created equal, I will attempt to express how we spend our time between travel and meeting important dignitaries.

Asher meeting with the group

After a weekend generally packed with travels, meetings and a little down time on the beach if we're lucky, Monday morning the whole team heads to the Bronica Innovation Lab at the Technion. Located on the sixth floor of the Industrial Engineering and Management Building, we work on our technology commercialization strategies while sitting around a large conference-style table. Between market size research, building presentation decks and meetings with Dingman Center Managing Director Asher Epstein, our office time keeps us quite busy.

While we're at the Technion we also take the opportunity to visit the laboratories where the cutting edge research that we are attempting to commercialize originated. Here, we have the opportunity to not only tour the facilities of the Technion but also meet with the innovators behind the technologies in order to understand the scientific and commercial sides of their work.

Touring the Technion Visitor's Center

When we need a break from the rigor of our work and meetings, the team walks outside our office to enjoy the view from the roof of the Bloomfield Building. From our vantage point atop a hill, we can see all of downtown Haifa, the Old City and even a little bit of the beach. Enough to recharge our batteries and get back to work, anyways.

Shimon Peres...in Person

Today we had the amazing opportunity to visit with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. We joined the American Technion Society at the beautiful David Citadel Hotel in a small group session with President Peres and Technion President Peretz Lavie who started the morning by discussing the history of the Technion. The institution, which is about to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of its cornerstone laying, has been the backbone of Israel's high-tech industry, training its engineers and producing groundbreaking research for years.

President Shimon Peres with Peretz Lavie

President Peres, whose support of the Technion over the years helped Israel become the high-tech powerhouse that is is today, predicted the need for Israel to now move into neuroscience and neurotechnology with the same vigor that it entered the nanotechnology industry. Specifically, President Peres emphasized the importance of building better computer-brain interface technology to help researchers understand more precisely how the human mind works. With this technology, he suggested,  researchers could develop stronger therapeutic methods and devices to better cure neurological ailments such as Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's.

The session ended with an open question and answer session for President Peres, who fielded questions on topics such as how Israel will incorporate the innovations of companies like Better Place into its infrastructure in the coming years.  The mere fact that President Peres dedicated his time to our group indicated the importance of the high tech industry in Israel, but in spending 90 minutes of his morning in open and frank discussion with us was truly unprecedented. When a statesman of his caliber is willing to dedicate his day to such a cause, its shows the esteem in which the Technion and its innovations are held and how treasured they are by the Israeli government and the individuals who run it.

Photos are Up!

Thanks to the great work of Marc Terada and Jay Zhang, we have some really great photos to share with everyone. Check out our photo blog for beautiful pictures of our work, meetings, travels and free time. We'll be updating with more photos throughout the summer so everyone can keep up to date with our experience. The photo site is linked-up on the side of the blog, so check back often to see the latest photos.

South Company Visits

Between shopping in the Souq, touring around Jerusalem, floating on the Dead Sea and hiking up Masada, our trip to the south of Israel provided the opportunity to visit some of the nation's leading companies, innovators and thought leaders.  From social venture incubator PresenTense to world drip irrigation leader Netafim, we met with a broad spectrum of business leaders whose scope and purpose truly run the gamut:


PresenTense

This Jerusalem-based incubator for social entrepreneurs fosters change in Israel and abroad by providing the right conditions, networks and education for thought leaders to be successful. From the open kitchen and beanbag chair furnished common area to their proprietary pedagogy focused on building an idea into actionable social change, PresenTense understands innovation. During our visit they put this to the test by taking our team through an "idea slam", which is a creative method to combine individual thoughts on an idea and turn them into a single plan to create change.

Yaron from PresenTense

Hadasit

Before explaining Hadasit (the biomed technology transfer company for Hadassah Hospital), one must first understand Hadassah Hospital. Perched on a massive Mount Scopus campus, Hadassah Medical Center is one of the world's leading medical research companies and certainly the largest facility of its kind in Israel, producing countless patents and innovations for improved medical treatments...which is where Hadasit comes in. The biomed technology transfer company for Hadassah selects the most promising intellectual property coming out of Hadassah and leverages the hospital's facilities to commercialize the technology in-house. With so many of our team members working on medical and biomedical technology applications, this visit showed us one of the several strategic options for our own business plans.

Netafim

From its humble roots on a Kibbutz, this company has grown to become the worldwide leader in drip irrigation and is a key part of keeping Israel green and making its deserts arable. With operations all over the globe, from India and China to the US and Argentina, Netafim is a great example of how solving a local problem can lead to a global business solution.

Cafe Ringelbloom

What's better than a delicious lunch served in a trendy cafe? Knowing that the cafe is part of a socially conscious venture that takes at-risk youth and provides them with the tools and opportunities to better their lives. With a great mission and delectable food, this place is definitely worth a visit for anyone passing through Be'er Sheva.

The team at Cafe Ringelbloom

Jerusalem

No visit to Israel is complete without a trip to its capital and most famous destination: Jerusalem.  As part of a trip to the south of Israel that combined business, pleasure and cultural learning, we had the great fortune to see many of the wonders of this ironically timeless town.  I will disclaim this post, however, by stating that I am neither a historian nor a theologian.  Indeed, more in-depth coverage of the dates, names and religious significance of Jerusalem’s myriad sites should be sought elsewhere.  Rather, I will offer my own perspective on this beautiful city and attempt to express how visiting it has changed my perspective on the country, the region and the world.

Jerusalem is a recognizable name across the globe.  To that end, we are all aware that much of the controversy in this part of the world stems from the variety of claims made to his holy parcel of land.  And we have all seen news stories about when these claims boil over into conflict – but this what not my experience at all.  Throughout my visit, Jerusalem was nothing short of safe and secure.  We passed from the Muslim Quarter to the Jewish Quarter to the Muslim Quarter and from holy place to holy place, and never felt anything short of welcome. If nothing else, witnessing local residents, tourists and religious pilgrims all visiting the same places provided a sense of hope that differences are being set aside as the city’s diverse populations find a way to coexist.


My few days in Jerusalem also provided a deeper understanding of the geopolitical landscape of this region.  For all of its historical importance, this region continues to dominate the headlines on a regular basis, and walking its streets gave me insight into the city and the region.  The Palestinian Territories of the West Bank lie just outside the city limits, and Jordan can be seen from a hilltop on a clear day.  This, combined with Jerusalem’s own diverse population, helped put into perspective the meaning of the city and how it factors into the overall geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.

Without question, the most valuable takeaway from my time in Jerusalem is a deeper appreciation of what makes Jerusalem so important to so many people. Jews, Christians and Muslims all lay claim to parts of this city, and throughout its history Jerusalem has been controlled by a host of rulers from all faiths and backgrounds.  A simple Google News search tells you that the city is important, but it cannot explain why.  Only through walking its streets, shopping in its markets and talking too its residents can the visitor hope to understand the complexity that makes this city what it is.

Jerusalem Souq

This last week we had the amazing opportunity to visit the timeless city of Jerusalem.  It is at once a holy place for some of the world's largest and oldest religions, a destination for pilgrims from across the globe, a tourist attraction that makes a significant contribution to the Israeli economy, and the cultural heartland of Israel. 

Our first introduction to Jerusalem was in the Souq, a large market that was bustling with shoppers picking up provisions before the city shuts down on Shabbat. (Jewish law calls for a day of rest beginning with sundown on Friday, and all shops close for the ensuing 24 hours.)

The market offers every kind of delicious Israeli and Middle Eastern delicacy you could ever crave. The fruits and vegetables were bright and fresh, not necessarily what the novice would expect from a desert where it seldom rains.  I guess we have Netafim's homegrown irrigation technology to thank for that.

The fresh-baked breads were especially delicious and ubiquitous. The challah bread was baked special for Shabbat.  Challah in the US does not even compare.

All in all, the Souq was a great introduction to the long weekend we would spend in Jerusalem as well as a primer on Middle Eastern markets at large.  The tradition behind this type of marketplace dates back to long before we were born, and witnessing it in Jerusalem was a special experience.  Eating all the goodies we picked up was just the icing on the cake.

(all credit to Ken Chen for the beautiful photos)

Ceasarea

This last week we had the amazing opportunity to visit some of Israel's most beautiful sites. Our first stop along our journey south was Caesarea, an ancient port city on the Mediterranean built by Herod the Great.  I will spare you the details, dates and meanings behind the sites we visited, as you could surely find them elsewhere. Besides, any world traveler knows the golden rule of story telling: never bore your audience with the details when all they really want is photos.  So without further adieu (all photos courtesy of the talented Jay Zhang):

Like any good Roman settlement, it starts with an amphitheater...

...and a hippodrome...

...for chariot racing.

And what Roman would build a city without columns...

... to hold up the fancy marble work?

And don't forget the aqueduct for fresh water...

...and all this with a beautiful view by the sea.

Communicating Israeli Style

One thing that became apparent to the participants in this program last year was the stark contrast between Israeli and American communication styles.  Add to that dichotomy the diversity of our team this year: one Taiwanese, two mainland Chinese, one Brazilian and one Nigerian by way of the United Kingdom.  And not to mention that not all Israelis are made equal either, as the nation’s open immigration policies have brought in diversity from across the globe.  The resulting makeup of every technology commercialization team is diverse.

While multinational companies have found that this type of diversity often leads to great results, it is not without its difficulties.  As a result, we all took part in a course on cross cultural communications focusing on the differences between American and Israeli styles.  We discussed how each culture views itself and how it views the other and enjoyed looking at some of the following differences.  For instance, where Americans see themselves as friendly and open, Israelis see this as naivety; and where Israelis see themselves as confident and willing to take risks, Americans consider this brash and arrogant.  In short, members of a particular group tend to see their defining characteristics as positives that others sometimes view as negatives.

While dissecting these cultural differences was a fun and sometimes comical experience, the recognition and corresponding application of them in our work this summer is serious.  My team is comprised of four individuals all born in different countries across several continents (US, China, Ukraine, Israel), so understanding the quirks of our counterparts is crucial to our success.  Disagreements will no doubt arise, but understanding our cultural differences can help us limit the disagreement to business decisions and defuse and difficulties stemming from our respective backgrounds.

When we leave Israel in July, our technologies will remain here in Haifa, and the inventors will remain in their labs at the Technion.  One skill that we will all take back with us, however, is the real world expertise of navigating an international business team.  Indeed, many of us signed up for this experience because we relish the thought of connecting and working with people from across the world – the international nature of our team bears this out.  One of the challenges of today’s business environment is the ability to effectively navigate cross cultural situations, and I know we are all better prepared for this challenge moving forward.