Somewhere in Israel right now, a research team is putting the finishing touches on a technology that could reshape an entire industry. And somewhere else sometimes only a few kilometers away a company, an investor, or an entrepreneur is searching for exactly that breakthrough. The quiet tragedy of innovation is that these two sides so often fail to find each other in time.

I have spent more than twenty years trying to close that gap, and I want to use this blog to share what I have learned because the tools we now have to bridge it are changing faster than at any point in my career.

Two worlds that should be talking

On one side are the institutions that create technology: universities, research institutes, hospitals, and the technology transfer offices that turn their discoveries into licensable, investable assets. I have lived on this side for most of my career over 2 decades, first as CIO at Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later as CIO and head of marketing at Yeda, the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science and a Director at ITTN, Israel’s Technology Transfer Organization. These organizations sit on some of the most valuable intellectual property in the world.

On the other side are the people who could put that technology to work: companies looking for an edge, venture capitalists hunting for the next opportunity, and entrepreneurs ready to build. They would happily collaborate if only........

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