The Eilat Tech Center (ETC) in southern Israel is teaching innovation centers in 25 European Union member states how to promote startup growth in the coronavirus era.
Representatives of 85 innovation organizations attended the kickoff session on March 31, led by Or Haviv, CEO of the Eilat Hub and a partner in its parent company, Arieli Capital.
Participants came from Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Switzerland; as well as Israel, the United States, Ghana and Mexico.
They represented groups such as hubs, accelerators, shared workspaces, government bodies, academic institutions (including Oxford University) and companies specializing in online training. About half the participants represented innovation groups in the field of health.
Haviv presented the case study of an Italian nanotech company that took part in the Eilat acceleration program that succeeded at the outset of the coronavirus crisis to finalize a $350,000 deal with an international agritech company.
ETC has a history of collaborative programs in Europe. These include the first joint Italian Israeli innovation program launched in January in Eilat for accelerating startups founded and backed by the Italian Embassy and Intesa Sanpaolo, a leading Italian banking group.
ETC also has a cooperation program between the municipalities of Nice and Eilat for the advancement of smart cities initiatives.
As a result, representatives of the European Innovation Hub in Israel asked the directors of ETC to hold online training sessions for innovation centers in the EU to assist them in transferring over to a digital work model.
“At a time when the whole world has changed its work patterns to remote based operations and when teams of companies are spread out around the world and working from home, the geographical distance of the Eilat Hub, as the most southern innovation ecosystem in Israel, turned into an advantage overnight,” Haviv commented.
Sharon Gindi, director of business development at ETC, said: “One of the most significant results of the coronavirus crisis is the strengthening of cooperation between countries in general and between high-tech organizations specifically. There is a worldwide understanding today of a shared fate and only strong cooperation and the transfer of knowhow will enable us to find solutions.”
Below, Haviv gives us his golden rules.
10 golden rules for remotely promoting the growth of companies
- Don’t micromanage
- Become a generalist with a team of experts
- Backbrief in a way that doesn’t lose the messages relating to mission, timeline, task and purpose.
- Scale – master outsourcing
- Be attentive to redundancy
- Collaborate
- Keep your ”why” alive, it’s your fuel!
- Be holistic and give back
- Keep the organizational fabric alive
- Communicate.
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