‘Promoting a culture of innovation’ - The EUREKA Israeli Chairmanship launch event
The incoming Israeli Chairmanship planned a second edition of a Chairmanship launch conference with the ambition to further develop and build upon the experiences of its German predecessors in Dresden in July 2009.
The Chairmanship decided to precede the event with a gala dinner, which took place at the prestigious Concert Noble in Brussels on the evening of 12 July. Over 200 participants, many of them key European stakeholders, members of EU Permanent Representations, MEPs, Commission and Council representatives, EUREKA network and Clusters gathered to listen to interventions by high-level speakers from Europe and Israel. The event split into two distinct parts, separated by a coffee break – first, a ‘EUREKA in the ERA’ session and secondly, an Israeli-led session; the whole was moderated by ESE director Luuk Borg. Highly animated Q&A sessions indicated that those attending the event were interested in the subject matter and considerable positive feedback and compliments were received from participants on the programme and content. As a follow-up to this launch conference, planning is in place for another high-level event at the European Parliament, but on a smaller scale. Under the auspices of the annual European Innovation Summit on 11-12 October (see page 13), a VIP informal lunch debate will be organised with the title ‘Financing Innovation’, bringing together stakeholders from the R&D financing field, from Commission to European Investment Bank, venture capitalist and business angel organisations and key Israelis experts in this field. A number of European Parliamentarians have already voiced an interest in supporting such an event.
Speakers at the ‘Promoting a culture of innovation’ event included: Eli Opper, EUREKA Chairman, Chief Scientist, Ministry of Industry, trade and labour; Per-Ove Engelbrecht, Head of unit: Financing Innovation and SMEs , European Commission; António Fernando Correia De Campos, Member of the European Parliament; Gerard de Graaf, Head of unit: Strategic Objective Prosperity, European Commission; Rudolf Haggenmüller, Chairman of EUREKA embedded software Cluster ITEA 2; Meir Sheetrit, Member of the Knesset - Chairman Science and Technology Committee; Shuki Gleitman, Founder and the GP of Platinum VC fund; Chemi Peres, Managing General Partner and Co-Founder Pitango Venture Capital; Dafna Schwartz, Department of Business Administration, and director of Bengis Center for Entrepreneurship and Hi-Tech Management, Ben Gurion University; Tomer Kariv, CEO of Pontifax Funds; David Almagor, Chairman, CEO, Co-Founder Panoramic Power; Doron Shalom, CEO of MS Tech;Bastiaan Belder, Member of the European Parliament. All the presentations given by speakers at the conference and a selection of photos can be found at www.eurekanetwork.org/ep-israelichair-event