The Skolkovo innovation centre has signed a cooperation agreement with the Israeli city of Yoqneam Illit, marking its first partnership with a fellow hi-tech city.
Skolkovo's Igor Drozdov (left) and Yoqneam Illit Mayor Simon Alfasi sign the cooperation agreement Thursday. Photo: Russian government press service.
The agreement was signed Thursday during an official visit by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Israel.
Yoqneam Illit, located in northern Israel about 80 kilometres from Tel Aviv, is being developed as a rural hi-tech hub, prompting its label of “Israel’s startup village.” It is home to more than 100 hi-tech companies working in areas including biotech, IT, new industrial, green and agricultural technologies. International tech giants that have set up R&D centres in the city include Intel, Panasonic Avionics, Telco Systems and Medtronic.
“This agreement is unprecedented for us in many respects,” said Igor Drozdov, chairman of the board of the Skolkovo Foundation, who signed the agreement on behalf of the Russian side.
“Today Skolkovo as an innovation city is signing an agreement with a similar city: Yoqneam Illit. We expect that this city will become a platform for international cooperation for the Skolkovo Foundation,” he said.
Yoqneam Illit Mayor Simon Alfasi, who signed the agreement on the Israeli side, said the future lies in hi-tech industries.
“As a leading hi-tech and education city, Yoqneam is proud to sign an agreement to promote cooperation with Skolkovo,” he said at the signing ceremony, which was attended by Medvedev. “Yoqneam and Skolkovo will work together and promote initiatives which will benefit Israel, Russia and the entire world," said the mayor.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (left) and his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Thursday. Photo: Government.ru
Drozdov said he hoped that the foundation’s Israeli partners would be interested in Skolkovo’s startups, “for which this cooperation will be the starting point to reach the global market.”
Under the agreement, Skolkovo and Yokneam Illit are planning business missions and joint projects in biomed, IT and telecoms, as well as academic exchanges and bilateral cultural and educational events.
Skolkovo has long been working closely with Israel, which has been dubbed the “startup nation.”
This month, a delegation from the foundation’s biomed cluster will visit the Middle Eastern country to meet with companies and venture capital funds there, hold talks on creating joint R&D projects, and search for new industrial partners for Skolkovo companies seeking to enter the Israeli market.
“It’s a country with both excellent medicine and agriculture: the two areas that our cluster strives to develop,” Skolkovo biomed cluster’s science director, Elmira Safarova, told Sk.ru in a recent interview.
Israel was also the partner-state of this year’s Open Innovations forum, held at the Skolkovo Technopark last month. Israeli Minister of Science, Technology and Space Ofir Akunis, who spoke at the forum, said that a crucial role had been played in the development of science and tech innovation in his country by the million immigrants from the Soviet Union that Israel accepted.
Israel’s agriculture minister also visited Skolkovo earlier this year, where it was agreed that a working group should be set up to facilitate joint research and development of agricultural technology.