Inspirational tour May 2022: Israel

The Hamrin Foundation explored Israel for seven inspirational days in May 2022, together with the country’s Ministry of Economy & Industry. The goal was to learn, get inspired and establish new relations. The Foundation wanted to get a deeper understanding of Israeli culture and the country’s potential as an innovation megahub.

The itinerary included:

Peres Center for Peace & Innovation
Weizmann Institute of Science
Yeda Research and Development Ltd
ARC Center at the Sheba Medical Center
Ramot (Tel Aviv University’s tech transfer company)
Yissum (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s tech transfer company)
T3 (Technion’s tech transfer unit)
IBM Alpha Zone, one of the world’s top 10 AI accelerators
Successful startups (Waze, TIPA, Mobile Eye, Melodea, Drive TLV)
Venture & startup funds and investors (Terralab, Margalit Startup City)
The Kitchen (a foodtech hub, part of the Israel Innovation Authority’s Incubators programme)
Israel Innovation Authority
Israel Ministry of Economy & Industry
Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial
Swedish Embassy
Vinnova’s Israel office

Why Israel?

Coming from Sweden – a small country for which international trade and networking is crucial, just like Israel – we wanted to discover what might tie us together, while simultaneously exploring the different ways in which we solve challenges.

Peter Aronsson, historian and Vice-Chancellor of Linnaeus University, summarises the connection between Småland and Israel as follows: “In a context of scarcity, meaningfulness and cultivation become much more important: you can only rely on your own capacity and creativity to adapt, develop and keep going.”

Outcomes of the tour

Broadening our perspective strengthened our ability to challenge “the Swedish way” of doing things. We also entered new collaborations and set up new initiatives with Israeli universities, startups and other partners.