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According to the 2015 Bloomberg Global innovation index, Israel is the world’s 5th most innovative country. Over 1,000 new startups are formed every year in Israel, and in 2014 there were more than $5B worth of acquisitions.
How do you explain such a successful entrepreneurial spirit?
During a tour in Tel Aviv’s startups hub, SOSA, Orna Kleinmann, SAP Labs Israel Managing Director, provides an explanation. She believes that Israel’s innovation spirit derives from necessity: Israel is a small country, with no substantial natural resources, which must fight for its existence. This kind of collective experience breeds creativity and creates a sense of strong, supportive community that is the foundation for the local innovation ecosystem.
Clas Neumann, head of SLN at SAP and one of our guests, claims that “in Israel, there’s a certain attitude of getting things done, a level of fearlessness.”
The Lab maintains and develops strong ties to the Israeli ecosystem of Innovation. On June 29, SAP Labs Israel celebrated the launch of a partnership with The Junction, Israel’s most established accelerator program. Over 200 guests comprised of Israel’s top startups, academia, venture capital, and SAP guests, gathered to celebrate this newly founded partnership, which is SAP Lab Israel’s next step in leveraging the spirit of the ecosystem and using it to support SAP’s strategy.
SOSA and The Junction are located in an old industrial building in the south of the city, and when you visit there, you get caught immediately in the energy and enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs who work and collaborate on designing their MVPs and go-to-market.
One of the presenters was Ilan Sobel from the Israeli startup Weissbeerger, a graduate of the Startup Focus program and a SAP partner. Sobel talks about using the power of Big Data and IoT to turn the alcohol consumption world upside down. Other startups we meet during the evening at SOSA and the launch party are showing how to be game changers in every possible industry.
Clas Neumann mentions a few areas in which SAP can use this kind of innovation injection: Mobility, IoT, and Cyber Security. The startups in the program are the partnership’s biggest winners: They get to use SAP’s expertise and vast knowledge of the Enterprise to build better products.
