FOSTERING INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE TAU MODEL

Abstract

Despite being one of the youngest research institutions in Israel, at 60 years old, Tel Aviv University is the biggest, with 30,000 students. Almost half of the student body is at the master’s or doctoral level. It is the most comprehensive institution of higher education in Israel, with 9 faculties spanning the humanities, arts and sciences, and 125 schools and departments. Most of the fields that are taught at Nazarbayev University – such as law, economics, medicine, public policy and engineering – are also strong areas at Tel Aviv University. Our graduates and faculty members play leading roles across Israeli society and beyond. They are Supreme Court Justices, cabinet ministers, political leaders, CEOs of top companies, health system managers, educators, famous film and theater directors and much more. In terms of rankings, I think the two most significant ones for this occasion are as follows. First, Tel Aviv University was recently ranked as a top 100 World Innovation University, and number 1 in Israel. Second, Tel Aviv University ranks 9th in the world for producing successful start-up founders. We are the only school among the top 10 outside of the United States. In other words, our graduates are leading in the entrepreneurship arena right up there with Stanford and MIT. Over the past five years, TAU produced 250 founders of startups, each of which attracted an average of $1.7 million in venture capital investments. One of these companies, whose co-founder studied economics and philosophy at Tel Aviv University, was sold for over $1 billion to Google. Now, Tel Aviv University is not a wealthy private university. We do not throw billions of dollars at our R&D. Rather, we are a public, state-funded, highly regulated institution. Let me give you some figures for other recognized innovation universities: Stanford and Harvard spend $800–900 million on research per year. The University of Michigan, which, like us, is a public university, spends $1.3 billion. By stark contrast, Tel Aviv University spends only $160 million annually on research. So how do we do it? How do we cultivate a spirit of innovation that translates into patents, viable technologies and businesses? I believe innovation-building requires at least 6 core ingredients, and these can be adapted and replicated across different kinds of organizations