BIRD's Challenges

In a recent interview, I was asked what challenges I see for the BIRD Foundation in the future. It's a good and relevant question.

To answer it, we need to take a look at two different points of view.

From the Israeli point of view, the goal is to support the continued development and growth of Israel’s technology sector, which faces increased global competition.  Leaders everywhere understand the power of innovation as a growth engine. Governments are seeking ways to build innovation hubs and attract investors to tap into their local talent. Many of them visit Israel to study the hi-tech ecosystem and the roots of its achievements. Hi-tech and medium hi-tech industries have become a significant driver of the Israeli economy (together they amount to ~$37B of industrial exports in 2013, ~80% of the total industrial exports). However, sustained growth is not assured. 
 
There is tough competition, first for investments and second, for the markets. In between, there is additional competition: for partnerships with well established companies which can themselves become investors and/or help a start-up acquire market share.

From the U.S. point of view, we can define two different goals. One is to support well established U.S. companies in their constant pursuit of innovation to gain competitive advantage. The other - no less important goal - is to help small and medium size U.S. companies, including start-ups, to access Israeli innovation. The former is a traditional BIRD objective, since its creation. The latter is a relatively new objective and is in-sync with the U.S. Government’s policy to support entrepreneurship ("Startup America"). It has become possible and significant, due to the relative maturity of the Israeli technology sector, which enables successful partnerships between U.S. young companies and Israeli companies. In addition, a U.S. company can access export markets, following a successful R&D project with an Israeli company.

To address this objective, The BIRD Foundation is organizing a seminar in Israel on December 17, 2014, “Capitalizing Global R&D Collaborations,” that will focus on ways and methods to create global partnerships and will share the experience of Israeli companies and multinational companies who are active in creating these partnerships.

In order to successfully continue fulfilling our mission of supporting joint R&D for mutual benefit, we must understand very well the needs of our customers: Israeli and U.S. companies, which most certainly include R&D collaboration as part of their business strategies. We must be alert to new technology trends and developments. We must manage our resources effectively and we must work to increase our funding capability to support more collaboration.

These are our main challenges, derived directly from our mission and its application to present times.
 
Eitan Yudilevich, Ph.D.
Executive Director

  Latest Investments
 
BIRD to invest $9 million in 11 new projects
The approved projects involve innovations in the areas of 3D Printing, Agro-technology, Information Security, Homeland Security and others

During its meeting on June 26, 2014, held in Washington D.C., the Board of Governors of the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation, approved $8.9 million in funding for eleven new projects between Israeli and American companies. In addition to the grants from BIRD, the projects will access private sector funding, boosting the total value of all projects to approximately $25 million.
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