“Israel is one of the startup epicentres of the world after Silicon Valley. Over the last two years, 71 companies reached the unicorn status, 15 waves of IPO happened and the startup ecosystem soared to a $50B valuation."

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Tsvi Lev who combines a career in innovation and strategy including working with giants like Amdocs as the VP & Head of Strategy and Samsung Electronics as VP innovation & Strategy.

He currently brings that expertise to NEC Research Center Israel as the Managing Director and Corporate Vice President, where he helps Israeli companies, products, and technologies to incorporate into the NEC Global business offering.

Tsvi is also one of the respected authors of numerous patents, and a frequent speaker at events related to technological innovation.

In addition to his extensive corporate experience, Tsvi has been an entrepreneur in the mobile multimedia and computer vision space and brought his two-year-old company to a successful exit.

In this far-ranging conversation, we discuss with Tsvi:

• Israeli technological Innovation- what’s going on and what’s coming up next?
• Startup ecosystem - Drivers, challenges and pillars of support
• Trends in the remote work- all sorts of flavour
• Why always-on connectivity is the new infrastructure
• A dual cybersecurity mission- supporting business continuity and protecting the enterprise and its customers

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

Israeli Technological Innovations and Transformation

There have been seventy-one unicorns and 15 IPOs in 2020 that have changed Israel. If you combine the number of employees of pre and post IPO company’s want to hire. Theirs is more than available; talent competition is fierce. The unicorns were able to raise over 15 billion dollars in the last couple of years.

Tsvi says that NEC Research Center has an excellent view of the latest trends and waves in the technology sector. The key is the coupling of digital transformation with AI; NEC has been doing things independently for a long time. However, no one can do everything by themselves in this new world. Hence, they lookout for a new wave, a major global trend that is going to change everything and at the same time relates to NEC’s current or future business.

They find a plethora of new startups to collaborate with NEC. Tsvi says the startups are quick and nimble, like surfers who can paddle quickly and catch the wave; they can guide NEC there. NEC’s job in the lab is to understand what they do, see how it may relate to NEC, and then push it in NEC. NEC does co-research, development, product positioning, analysis, and commercial negotiations. Hence, they don’t call the employees researchers but innovation coaches; they coach the startups to make a difference.

Remote Work, Challenges and the Future of Work

Just like other countries, Israel had a couple of small covid lockdowns. Most folks worked from home. Few multinational companies ceased functioning running operations  as part of global directives. In the worst case, 40% of the workforce was at the office; now, it is 60%. Employees come to the office three days a week. Since NEC isn’t only into software, there are also labs; working entirely from home was never an option.

Follow Tsvi on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar