THE ECOSYSTEM SUMMIT
Under the motto “The ultimate arena for start-up program leadership”, the Ecosystem Summit 2022 has undoubtedly become one of the most significant annual events held in Israel, where we can meet with ecosystem leaders and start-up program managers representing more than 30 countries. In addition, the presence of entrepreneurs, investors, start-ups, and corporations creates the perfect breeding ground to discuss the latest trends and global challenges we face today while exchanging knowledge, and beginning inadvertently to build new connectors that trigger ideas and projects that each of us can then use in our habitat, adapting them according to our context and needs.
The Summit was organized by EIT Hub Israel in collaboration with Amazon Web Services and Tel Aviv Global and Tourism, and was held on November 14 in the heart of Tel Aviv.
In hybrid format, combining physical presence with digital, the participants were able to fully understand the potential impact in their ecosystems through the creation of value, experiences, and connections, with different panels and presentations taking place that aimed to maximize the development of ecosystems through innovation and entrepreneurship.
After the official opening of the Summit by representatives of the partners, the first presentation took place with the title “From Unicorns to Centaurs – A Shift in Ecosystem Holy Grail” by Adam Bregu, Director of Business Development and Partnerships at Startup Genome. Interesting data to point out are that technology currently represents 6% of the world economy, and that 63% of all the value created by start-up ecosystems can be found in just ten places. On the other hand, it became clear that whenever we talk about high-performance start-up ecosystems, we will find that their founders are globally connected, and this will make their companies internationalize faster, creating the same effect on the maturity of their ecosystem.
Pressing current issues were also given a place on the stage, such as the change in energy prices and the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is expected that there will be many more down rounds during the year 2023 if we compare them with the years 2021 and 2022, and the vast majority of the sectors will be dragged down by the fact of the reduction in jobs that will come from technology companies. What is certain is that everything that has happened during the last month, such as the huge general decrease in investments and company valuations, will produce a future new case study for business schools that could be called “The Ethics of the VC.” This means that the funds are already betting not on improvement ideas that provide an incremental value proposition but on disruptive ideas that mark a clear differential value while maintaining a solid relationship with investors without forgetting all related issues on climate change and sustainability. In the words of Shani Zanescu, Co-Founder of PLANETech “Amidst the market backdrop, investments in climate tech remain fairly stable. It is no surprise, as climate change is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, and climate tech is the biggest opportunity – for founders, investors, corporations, and governments”.
After the coffee break, “The Ungrateful Startup? A fireside chat” opened the discussion about the complex relationship between start-ups & start-up programs. Kerry Ritz, an entrepreneurial expert from the UK, interviewed Hilla Ovi-Brenner, Co-Founder & CEO of Yazamiyot, about the essential ingredients of an acceleration programme, and how to understand the relationships between the accelerator and the accelerated company. As Kerry later remarked: “The conversation with Hilla was a masterclass in the power of networks. Leveraging networks is the most powerful currency available to a Founder. But it is equally powerful for programs to leverage the knowledge and capabilities of other programs, especially cross-border. Good programs open the doors to Founders for access to not only potential investment but knowledge and the opportunity to share experiences–all of which are equally useful.”
After a short break, the breakout session “What makes a strong startup leader? How VCs evaluate founders” by Inbal Perlman, Partner at TAU Ventures took place. During the presentation, the essential aspects of the leadership that Venture Capitals focus on when investing were unpacked. Without strong leadership, a venture capital fund will never invest. Some attributes that distinguish this leadership are the founder’s experience and knowledge, passion and charisma, intellectual integrity and self-awareness, as well as professionalism and strategic thinking. It is essential to differentiate between a leader and a manager. The leader will always be focused on the vision and will lead people through motivation, inspiration, and empowerment. Furthermore, a leader will be long-term oriented and devote day-to-day efforts to strategic thinking, always guided by the vision and focusing on the “WHY” rather than the “HOW”.
Before the last plenary session, an exciting dialogue occurred under the title “Money is just the beginning; value creation for startups”. The main takeaways were around value creation. Here, connections play a crucial role, and value creation is supposed to benefit both start-ups and VCs. According to Dorin Baniel, VP Value Creation at Glilot Capital, they form boards through searching social media for profiles that can be labelled as “forward thinkers” and that way add value.
Finally, Adi Yoffe, Founder & Owner of Fast Forward gave an inspiring talk on the main stage. Under the title “Future thinking – how to predict trends in a disruptive reality”.
Megatrends can be the key to glimpsing what will happen in the future since the present can tell us about the past, not the future, and through them, we can see how behaviours change. The future is something that is being invented now, and we should look at it another way, with other lenses, and different perspectives, given that the data is not enough to get a slight idea. It was also interesting to understand the different Visions of the Future. The “Future in pieces” is where services and products are cut into small pieces, as it happens with Tik Tok where we cut the video and gain the ability to choose what we want. We also found the so-called “Future of Re-Appropriation” where we all want to be the Masters of our lives and future. We look for facilitators to achieve it, such as the Metaverse, which should not be understood as a virtual reality tool but as a facilitator to achieve our utopian life.
To round off the Summit, an informal gathering in the form of a cocktail party was held next to the conference room. Here, the importance of networking and networking as a fundamental element in helping to develop ecosystems was once again evident, highlighting connections and experiences as enablers for achieving scale and the development of new innovative projects and experiments by the whole ecosystem.
Contributed: Oriol Pascual, CEO at STAGE2
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The Health not The Death is a fundamental human right. A healthy population is not to be seen as human and social capital, an input, or by-product, towards economic growth. Alongside a healthy and sustainable environment, a solidarity, a healthy population must be the ultimate goal especially nowadays in helping Ukrainian migrants with cancer and their families.
Solidarity in health is a cornerstone of EU health policy. There are wide disparities in many health outcomes across the region and those outcomes. The access rules dramatically affect healthcare systems which are at the forefront of the migrant way, the people who are searching for help and the way how we could enhance and support their healthier and wellbeing status.
In order to ensure their access to care and continued cure in need, the probability of receiving a timely diagnosis and of surviving differs greatly from country to country where they are now. There is lack of information, help and inequalities in access. People need help in navigating cancer knowledge, diagnostics, secondary monitoring and prevention, way of treatments, and care.
Shifting our mindset, supporting healthcare connectivity, removing inequalities overall across Europe is our mission and even more now in a time of crisis, helping the Ukrainian people dealing with cancer is a good place to begin this transformative revolution.
1) Whether we have a chance to foster more holistic and integrated approaches to receive information and care, by supporting coordination and maximising an enabling and health-enhancing effect of care across services from different countries?
2) Whether actions should address the social determinants of health, the countries where they are now, the health need which they have, the social and language barriers are the conditions which have to be taken into consideration in a coordinated manner?
How might we improve patients and /or people who seek healthcare support, access to healthcare services at an EU & the Member States Healthcare systems level? Especially in a time of crisis in Europe.
How might we support refugees fleeing from their countries by navigating them to medical centres to receive best available care?
Precision medicine aims to personalise care for every individual. Nongenomic and genomic determinants, combined with information from patient symptoms, clinical history, and lifestyle (nutrition, physical activity, stress etc.), can facilitate personalised diagnosis and prognostics. Yet this goal requires access to massive amounts of data which may come from different structured and unstructured sources; these can be our medical records, laboratory testing, a range of medical devices as well as from the patient himself. AI & ML can combine input from these multiple sources, analyse them and identify biomarkers that can support health professionals make more informed decisions. The convergence of precision medicine with the advanced AI capabilities will improve the ability to personalise care – improve diagnosis, risk prediction as well as therapy planning.
HCPs want to better predict treatment response, given uncertainty around which treatment to prescribe to which patient and when to prescribe. How do we risk assess the patients, match them with the right treatment (personalised). How can we transform the wealth of data and link it to the predictive nature of how the patient will respond?
Being diagnosed with cancer is overwhelming and comes as a blow. Patients may feel on a roller coaster of emotions—they are scared, lost & confused not knowing what to expect, who to refer to, what to do and how to tell their loved ones. They directly refer to “Dr. Google” to look for information about their disease, possible treatments, QoL strategies with the aim to have better understanding of their disease and learn how to better cope with their disease & treatment, yet information is not always valid, accessible, nor personalised or tailored to the patient’s status and needs therefore left with huge amounts of non-relevant information. Coming to the doctor, the physician’s time is limited and mostly focusing on the physical aspects of the disease & treatment, not leaving much time to ask questions nor discuss more holistic aspects of the disease such as emotional, psychological, social aspects. The patient (& caregiver in many cases) leaves the room with unanswered questions, doesn’t remember much of what has been said, and feels he is not heard, nor seen as a whole.
The need for navigating this journey along the emotional psychological stress is overwhelming & patients and their caregivers look for support (case manager/companion/partner) to help manage their disease holistically – starting from having clarity around their disease and treatment by having access to reliable and personalised information during their journey as well as having an integrated holistic care system , supporting them and their loved ones to navigate through the different aspects of their disease – medical, emotional, logistical, psychological, social, rights.
How can we support patients to navigate through the complexity of their disease and treatment ensuring they have validated holistic information about their disease journey & treatment and be empowered to effectively manage their care
As medical events pivoted from conference centres and meeting rooms to the virtual settings, learning opportunities continue. Lectures and presentations are translated to the new digital world, yet the ability to connect and network is relatively lost. Peer interaction is essential not only for information exchange but to share practical insights, allows consultation & in-person experience cross country and across borders leading to better disease management.
This peer-based learning/ consultation is highly valued amongst practising clinicians and was generally achieved when HCPs and KOLs met their peers in national & Intl conferences, group debates, advisory boards and even during quick corridor conversations. Attempting to replicate these in-person experiences into the digital space creates challenges and are not effective nor impactful as face-to-face engagements.
How might we improve HCP medical exchange enabling physicians to easily communicate, consult, exchange opinions leveraging individual experts & centres of excellence knowledge, experiences, and practices?
How can we leverage the technological expertise to allow HCPs to connect with leading experts across countries to get advice / counselling for their cases?
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