מאוטו לבריאות כשפורד וגנרל מוטורס מתאחדים.

From auto to health where Ford and GM get together
There are things that only can happen in America. A city of cars turn into a city of innovation and life science.
This is a vision we in Israel can relate to After all we have turned deserts into farms , Kibutz and towns and later even back into concrete desserts.
It is hard to understand how big the auto business of Detroit is in Israeli terms.
This city that nature gave the gift of green land probably has been the center of car making and thus the center of Road Making America for many decades.
And now the city want change and a change that not only bring it back the nature's beauty but also sustain and keep it a leading edge in America's economy.
It is only healthy that health biotech and environmental CleanTech and water take a key in this effort. And only right that the automakers take part. But this is not aid type of help but rather pure business building.
TechTown of Detroit is probably the most courageous and most far reaching local enterprise to drive a community's economy I have seen so far. And its doing it by promoting self enterprise. Coming from a community in Israel where every person and the next door neighbor consider them self the next big thing ("A STARtUP) its not obvious to us how in America where getting a job, a driver's license and a postal address mean the right to live, it is hard to move people to enterprise and funding (and finding) their own call in starting one's own business.
And the goals are enormous in numbers – hundreds of them in few years.
Such a drive needs an engine – and being backed by local academics is a plus but Ford and GM can and should be part of the mechanics and they are. techTown comes on their old machine-shops and with their back-wind.
We met TechTown as a group that is interested to promote life science in Haifa using a vehicle of promoting integration, or in Techtown's words soft landing.
We share the vision of what it takes for foreign company to immigrate to other geography culture and business. We both are experimenters in company immigration, rather then spreading we see tech company building a center be it a business center or R&D center, it is immigration rather then budding. I follow this bigger and most courageous experiment in amaze and in joy to see it grow.
You can too: http://www.techtownwsu.org/

Inflection points: when creativity stirs a revolution

Inflection points: where creativity stirs a revolution

I was a young Scientist, Graduate student, I just moved out of Europe, Paris of all places to Boston. From Life Science to Chemistry.
I thought I wanted to become a crystallographer and I believe I was one of a hundred who could spell it. I came from the laboratory of Ada Yonath at the Weizmann to Boston College for a fresh new Merkert Chemistry Center. I was in an inflection point on the brink of leaving biology and becoming a chemist. Boston was in an inflection point as well. DEC (Digital computers a giant in computers at the time) was loosing power in an ever growing pace to the PC/Mac world growing around, with jobs going to what was the Triangle in the Carolinas. Lots of Engineers were out of jobs, and many computer experts lost their basis.
I worked 10:00 to 02:00 every day but Saturday, I spent most of my Saturdays at the MFA and took only one evening off, where I joined one of the biggest cultural revolution of the 90s.- I thought I knew it, it just did not say so. I used to do Tuesday night at the bookseller café in Davis Square Cambridge where few former computer engineers, few story lovers and many of the then small storytelling community gathered around Brother Blue to start the underground that made Boston the Mecca of storytelling and changed the way oral literature moved around the world. It was just that everybody was there, and I was a fly on the wall. And the big blue long gifted individual was there to share a call. Storytellers came from all over the world to this venue for several years, and from there a gospel of community storytelling and community of storytellers has emerged. Its hard to explain how much story telling had changed since. Blue was the greatest listener and a teacher of listening. His gift of finding a spark where there is to be a fire is a story by itself. But - it was about what happened around Brother Blue: His followers were changing the attitude from storytelling for storytellers only – to storytelling for everyone gifted. Finding the innovative voice and expanding the definition of storyteller. The performer, the teller, the artist.
It was all there before, but Boston offered new voices, the foreigner, the poet storyteller, the musician and the non – performer one great story owner.
It was putting the great story first that made it a fascinating experience and such that attracted more and more. People came to listen to the one great story, that was often there. It was a listening venue, nurturing innovation in a way most High-tech managers would foster. It was Blue's way and the people around him took it there – but it was also an inflection point.
PC world was chasing super-computers ever so fast out of town, Boston was changing to becoming a campus city and all around the river Biotech world was being created.
Storytelling was a major at a few, but only a few Colleges (Leslie College among or only) and oral history and literature was included in few activities – partly in a few Jewish and Irish cultural places and in pubs.
Boston was to get storytelling out of the African American, Jewish or Irish Heritage or academics to the open as a community building tool for society, for schools.
"Blue nights" at the bookseller was a unique get together of all the powers of story telling, the Jewish story telling community (and coalition), the Irish and Celtic, even the pagan and the African American and the cellar as a junction created mixed potluck events, open-mikes, expanded LANES, and extended Sharing the Fire conference of storytelling on the coldest weekend of the Year every-year. In the 90s Americans felt they were losing their sense of community and many found through Tuesday night in the café that storytelling could give a sense of community. The café meeting was the "twilight-bark" for events and the community as many people came regularly from far up or down state to Tuesday night at the café, and a lousy beer and a Pizza afterward. But it all happened in Boston the center of shift, the city that created Polaroid and revolutionized photography. And Biogen Inc. was happening and a biotech buzz was in the happening. Things have shifted, it was the decade of the NMR, MRi and new things happened slowly at a pace of huge magnets. Cambridge was not to become biotech square until the late Nineties, but it was on the air. Between demonstrations (and shootings) in abortion clinics, the Boston marathon, and the Charles River Paw-wow Boston has turned to biotech capital of the world. Yet, also the Mecca of storytelling.
I learned to listen there, to the story of Boston to finding ones call. I was not looking for a story only I was looking for my own Mt Everest to climb.
I decided I will go for the neglected polymers of life. (Well - only neglected in the life-sciences at the time – I'd go back to sugars. I was interested in bio-computing and sugars and sugar binding proteins, I believed, could be the "magnetic tape of the future". (Yes, I belong to the generation that have buried the magnetic tape media technology during their studies).
It was an inflection point not only in Boston, even Crystallography was redefined, in Israel and around the globe the Ribosome Crystal Structure Summit was to be conquered – in a quest that deserves another story.
I later joined the laboratory of Prof. Vlodavsky to study complex sugars when I realized there is a lack of technology for such studies. There was my Mt. Everest. Since 1995 I was looking for a solution for carbohydrate structure determination. As early as in 1997 I started formulating a solution on the basis of 2d NMR principles and biochips, yet without a full solution. Since 1997 I made this quest public in "Automatic-sequencing carbohydrate polymers by the year 2005" forum. In 1998 I became head of Glycobiology (a title I made up and probably I was the first to ever have this title in industry) in Savion Diagnostics and started lectin database project and in 2000 Glycodata Ltd came to be (later Procognia)– in 2005 the first automatic sequencing tool for the lay-scientist was in the market at "Qiagen" on the basis of lectin array using my technology and Procognia's development, I was the founder of and a few products are in the market today. I hope I helped turning Mt Everest into a hill.
At the end of 2009, November 7th Brother Blue passed away at 88 – and Storytelling survived, many stories survived as well, .but maybe it stopped evolving, for a while.
I have found it out while writing this blog and this blog have turned into this.
A month later on December 10th Ada Yonath received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, her story is still told – she says it will take years for the dust to rest – and that is only the dust of the prize. Maybe then the story will spark.

On the innovation process and the spin-off process

On the innovation process and the spin-off process

The process by which innovative technology is born is usually in the mind of an innovative mind and then to new patents and then to new technology.
But the process by which a new application is created is more complex and more market oriented.
It often starts with a need. Then it is followed by understanding what solutions are out there, followed by a gap analysis.
It is often created to match an existing technology. So, analysis of the technology shortcomes or advantages is followed.
It is a most creative process - but it has much engineering to it.
The ability to create new application is a miracle at a time. It requires good market knowledge, technical skills, user needs understanding, intimate understandng of the field and the way technology is used in the field.
The rewards of application development is a shorter time to market, faster solution to problems, and faster time to market.
The ability to develop appications is the heart of any company (Tech-company) to grow, yet the process which is the most critical in a company's life is given much less attention than the initial invention and technology development.
The process is highly innovative and most creative as it needs curving ones way in a very limited land. thru all the obstacles of allready developend technology.
it requires complex teams, that know the technology, understand the needs and understand the user.
Often it needs different people in the R&D world. More the D people solution oriented and engineering type people. the type of people that ask the questions rather then the people with the answers.
When building an application group remmember then you need the three elements - market, technology and user.
You will need the patent - IP people later in the process but do not forget them.
appcation patents are the heart of a growing technology company.

It is critical to allow the organisation go through all the stages of project creation in any application - it tends to reduce development times.
For example - creating nanomaterial for window painting is different enough from creating nano material for wall painting to deserve a process, not to talk of using a machine for asthetic purposes vs. medical use or moving technology from sewage water treatment to treatment of seawater.
While you will spend more time initializing the project you have all the chances to
save time in the process by helping you in the process of problem solving.
remmember - Regulatory hurdles, market habits, money trails are more then likely to be different.
for example moving a material technology from medical to food may reduce regulatory health regulation but wil add issues of Kosher/hallal labeling that where not main issues before.