It's time to reveal a secret those in the know have been hiding: Rhode Island is quietly building its business and academic ties with Israel, widely identified in New England as the Startup Nation.
The model follows that generated by former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a model that fostered a dramatic jump in economic indicators tied to his state’s visionary innovation partnership with Israel. These indicators include thousands of jobs, projects for mutual benefit, and millions of dollars in revenue streaming into the Commonwealth.
Rhode Island has definitely taken notice. Since 2010, the state has been moving in a similar direction, starting with the first Israel Technology Day attended by then-Gov. Donald Carcieri.
This initial development led to the inaugural Rhode Island economic mission to Israel in November 2011. Gov. Lincoln Chafee planned to head the delegation, but unfortunately had to postpone his participation because of the pension crisis. The mission, organized and led by Commerce RI, was a success: several members of the group secured multi-million dollar orders from Israeli companies and government organizations. An academic agreement was also signed between Rhode Island College and two Israeli institutes as a result of the mission.
Also in 2011, Pawtucket-based Hasbro was awarded funding through the BIRD Foundation to partner with the Israeli-based company, Vivo Text, to develop a life-like speech capability for embedded platforms. BIRD, short for the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation, was established by our two governments in 1977 and ever since has worked to stimulate, promote and support industrial R&D. It represents one of the many shining examples of American-Israeli cooperation.
A second mission, focusing on health care and life sciences, traveled to Israel in 2013, again organized by Commerce RI and this time led by Michael D. Fine, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Fine and delegation members during this visit, and found their enthusiasm infectious. As in 2011, this mission generated multiple business agreements.
The very same week, it was announced that a $1 million brain research prize was awarded by Israel's President Shimon Peres to the team of John Donoghue and Arto Nurmikko from Brown University’s Institute for Brain Science.
The trend has continued ever since. This past December, the aforementioned BIRD foundation announced that 11 recipients — including two from Rhode Island — would receive a total of $8 million in joint research grants.
These included Rhode Island Hospital, partnering with the Israeli firm Timocco to create a Web/mobile therapeutic game platform for child physiotherapy; and Crawford High Performance Composites Ltd., which worked with Tel Aviv-based Softwheel to develop safer and less cumbersome equipment for the wheelchair-bound.
We applaud their achievements and look forward to a successful outcome of their partnerships.
Because of these recent successes, many Israeli companies are now in discussions to establish their beachhead in the United States in Rhode Island. There’s no doubt that there will be ample opportunity to collaborate, specifically in the areas of health care and health-care IT, cyber security, composite materials and more.
With El Al’s announcement of non-stop flights between Tel Aviv and Boston starting late June, it will become much easier for Israeli and Rhode Islander business people to interact. Needless to say, this development should also encourage bilateral tourism.
As was the case in neighboring Massachusetts, we sense a growing desire in Rhode Island to create and advance initiatives with entrepreneurs from Israel, the Startup Nation. With this enthusiasm as the catalyst, I look forward to developing and reaffirming the ties between us in the years to come.