Having made a remarkable success of her own high-tech start-up, Israel's
recently appointed Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and Trade,
Dr. Orna Berry, is now using her experience to help Israel's hundreds of
other aspiring technological entrepreneurs.
by Simon Griver
Israel has the second highest number of start-up companies in the world,
in absolute terms, after the United States - so observes Dr. Orna Berry,
recently appointed Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and
Trade.
"In my previous position I only had to worry about the success or failure
of one company," she explains, "now I have an entire nation of start-ups -
to worry about. But the recipe for success or failure is the same."
Dr. Berry, whose doctorate concerned the accelerated calculation of
simulations with computers, has worked as a senior researcher for Unisys
in the United States as well as IBM in Israel. She was chief scientist of
Fibronics, an Israeli computer networking pioneer, before setting up and
becoming co-President of her own start-up company Ornet - in 1992.
At Ornet Dr. Berry led a team which developed innovative LAN (Local Area
Network) software and equipment doubling the speed of data transmission.
Ornet was recently sold to the German conglomerate Siemens for $30
million. Now Dr. Berry aims to help hundreds of other start-ups enjoy
comparable achievements.
The Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) of the Ministry of Industry of
Trade and Industry is in contact with some 3,000 high-tech companies in
Israel. Each year, about 700 companies receive various grants which are
repayable in royalties should the company succeed. It is the role of the
OCS to support these start-ups and ensure that the ideas are marketable
and economically viable.
"The OCS also provides the legitimization that will eventually attract
investors from Israel and abroad," adds Dr. Berry, "and our R&D programs
are aimed at reducing the risk of investment in these young
enterprises."
Dr. Berry is particularly proud of the increasing interest foreign
investors are showing in Israeli high-tech firms. As recently as 1994,
overseas investment in Israeli high-tech enterprises and funds raised by
such Israeli companies on foreign stock exchanges amounted to just $26
million. This figure climbed to $241 million in 1995 and soared to $1.215
billion in 1996.
"Israel is rich in new ideas," stresses Dr. Berry, "and the challenge is
to ensure that those new ideas are marketable as value-added products.
This is especially important with the over 600,000 new immigrants from the
former Soviet Union, many of whom brought with them innovative patents and
very impressive technological knowledge, but little understanding of the
Western commercial environment, in general, and of the Israeli scene, in
particular."
Dr. Berry notes that these new immigrants have helped diversify Israel's
traditional strengths in such sectors as software, telecommunications,
medical electronics and biotechnology. The OCS's technological incubator
program has been specially designed to support the first phase of
technological development for new immigrants and others with little
entrepreneurial experience.
The OCS has also negotiated international R&D agreements with the US,
Canada, the European Union and Singapore to make new technologies
available to Israeli companies and bring Israel's innovative technology
overseas. Dr. Berry's Ornet, for example, benefited from cooperation with
a US partner through the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and
Development Fund (BIRD).
"Largely due to the success of high-tech start-ups, Israel has enjoyed
unprecedented economic growth in the 1990's," says Dr. Berry, "with
exports approaching $20 billion per year. The role of the OCS is to ensure
that these start-ups not only remain at the cutting edge of technology,
but have the correct business approach for success in an increasingly
competitive marketplace."