Promised Land U.S. companies find new opportunities by partnering with Israeli firms.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Susan Rogers' search for a low-cost device to screenAmerican students for scoliosis led to an unexpected place: Israel.In 2003, through the Tel Aviv-based BIRD Foundation, anorganization that connects U.S. companies seeking technology withIsraeli firms that want access to U.S. markets, School Health Corp.in Hanover Park, Illinois, located an Israeli company to work withon product development. School Health, a 100-employee companyfounded by Rogers' grandfather in 1957, even got financial helpfor the project.
OrthoScan, the Israeli company School Health is partnered with,"has a product that's successful with orthopedicsurgeons," Rogers explains. "They were trying to makesomething that could be used for screening, which is what wespecialize in. We saw a really good fit." With the help of a$400,000 joint grant for OrthoScan and School Health from the BIRDFoundation, School Health hopes to sell its low-cost scoliosisscreener to American school nurses and health departments startingin late 2005.
The School Health deal is one of more than 700 projects the BIRDFoundation has arranged in the past 20 years, says executivedirector Dov Hershberg. "Each year, we support between 25 and30 new projects," says Hershberg. And that's just afraction of the alignments between U.S. and Israeli companies.
The American-Israel Chamber of Commerce has been involved inmore than $700 million worth of transactions between U.S. andIsraeli companies in the past 13 years, says Tom Glaser, presidentof the not-for-profit group's Atlanta-based Southeast region.Many other organizations also facilitate U.S.-Israel connections,including permanent Israeli government trade offices in manycities, export institutes, VC firms and traveling trade missions."The Israeli model is not taking [products] to marketdirectly," Glaser says. "It's almost always throughchannels such as strategic partnerships."
Israel's technological prowess in areas from IT to lifesciences is rooted in the mass emigration of talented scientistsand engineers from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s,Hershberg says. Today, interest in Israel is picking up as theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict subsides, easing American concernsabout the security of doing business in Israel, Hershberg says.U.S. firms are also motivated to pursue Israeli alliances becauseof U.S. immigration restrictions that make it hard to hire foreigntalent.
Working with an Israeli firm hasn't turned out to be as easyas dealing with one across town or even across the United States,says Rogers, 36. But the entrepreneurial attitude of her Israelipartner has been a welcome surprise and a key reason Rogersrecommends that other U.S. entrepreneurs seek Israeli allies."It's the technology," she explains, "and thepeople behind it."
