Diplomatic World nummer 54
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DELEGATION FROM LIVING<br />
TOMORROW ON ECONOMIC<br />
MISSION TO INNOVATIVE TEL AVIV<br />
When you think of innovation, you think<br />
of Living Tomorrow. The Brussels marketing<br />
and demonstration platform that<br />
for more than 20 years has been working<br />
on innovation could not be absent from<br />
the renowned DLD Innovation Festival.<br />
Its management, along with its partners,<br />
embarked on an economic mission to the<br />
“start-up city”, Tel Aviv.<br />
152<br />
TEL AVIV, A SURPRISING CHOICE?<br />
The region between Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa<br />
has rightfully been called Silicon Wadi. A comparison<br />
with its American counterpart is not wide of the<br />
mark. All major American tech companies, such as<br />
Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Google, etc. are<br />
concentrated in that area. Many of them even have<br />
a substantial R&D department there. What is more,<br />
nowhere in the world are there as many start-ups per<br />
resident as in Israel: more than 7000 in the past ten<br />
years alone! That is quite a bit more than in Japan, the<br />
UK or Canada.<br />
The entrepreneurial spirit is truly part of the fabric.<br />
And the results are impressive. Some of the largest<br />
tech companies in the world had their beginnings in<br />
Tel Aviv: the website designer Wix, the GPS app Waze<br />
and Viber, the counterpart to Skype.<br />
Israeli policy has thus succeeded in retaining all that<br />
talent, as a result of which Tel Aviv and its surroundings<br />
have become the innovation hub. Meanwhile,<br />
Chinese investors with venture capital have also found<br />
there way here. The decision by Living Tomorrow to<br />
head over there with its start-up partners Forganiser<br />
and ApicBase is thus hardly surprising. At the DLD<br />
Innovation Festival, they were given the chance to discover<br />
potential business opportunities, make contacts<br />
and exchange knowledge with Israeli companies.<br />
FOODTECH & CLEANTECH<br />
In the areas of FoodTech and CleanTech, there is a<br />
good deal of know-how to be found in Tel Aviv. Living<br />
Tomorrow CEO Joachim De Vos followed the Clean-<br />
Tech path with visits to the world-renowned Rambam<br />
Health Care Campus and the leading Technion university,<br />
among others.<br />
E-health, digitization, advanced technologies in the<br />
areas of recycling, etc., are each items on which Living<br />
Tomorrow is also working.<br />
COO Patrick Aertsen, for his part, drew the FoodTech<br />
card. Innovation in the food sector are crucial in order<br />
to give our restaurant and catering sector a boost. Living<br />
Tomorrow start-ups Forganiser and ApicBase are<br />
fine examples of this, in fact. Forganiser has developed<br />
an effective software tool for the employment of flex<br />
workers. ApicBase, a start-up in food photography, has<br />
developed a camera with which chefs can, in a matter<br />
of seconds, photograph their creations, save them and<br />
share them on social media.<br />
Such companies are showing that they are the future,<br />
and Living Tomorrow wants to support them in their<br />
initiatives.
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