The Israel-America Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AmCham), which is active in education, media, real estate, homeland security, and other issues, held its second conference in New York in December.
Innovative Israeli projects, whose implementation has strategic national value, were presented at the conference. Michael Garnoff of Better Place LLC presented the company's vision of a national infrastructure for electric vehicles that will free the US from dependence on oil. Launch of the project in Israel as a beta site on a fairly small scale, and later in the US, could save the US auto industry by creating millions of new jobs, as well as reducing air pollution. Minister of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau outlined to the hundreds of attenders at the conference the government's plan in fields of sustainability.
On the panel on medical sciences information technologies, Allscripts CEO Glenn Tullman and Henry Schein chairman and CEO Stanley Bergman of the US, and ExactCost president and CEO Ilan Mintz of Israel agreed on the need for innovative solutions to reduce healthcare services costs, as well as improving medical services and information systems that will close the gap with innovation in the financial services industry.
The message that emerged from the conference was unequivocal: Israeli industry has much to offer the US, and the whole world, in innovation, despite Israel's modest size.
Dan Senor, the co-author of "Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle", concluded the conference, saying, "When the name of Israel arises, the image connected to it is 'conflict'. The time has come to change this word to 'innovation'."
AmCham's goal is for some of the US government's incentives package to be devoted to binational US-Israeli projects. If you like, a kind of Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD-F) on steroids; in other words, a binational foundation for innovation-based infrastructure projects. Such a foundation will require especially broad financing and collaboration not only by companies, but by governments.
In December 2010, AmCham will host its third annual conference in New York. We hope that that this year we will be able to announce progress, and even the realization of some of the ideas floated at the last conference.
Nechemia (Chemi) Peres is chairman of AmCham and co-founder and managing general partner of Pitango Venture Capital
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 17, 2010
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