"Israel is a global leader and a center of innovation," says senior dean.
By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZIUpdated: FEBRUARY 24, 2016 01:29The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management.(photo credit: VITOR PAMPLONA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
The MIT Sloan School of Management has recently launched a new Israel Lab program that matches its MBA students with leading Israeli companies.The program aims to bring together students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s top-ranked business school with Israeli companies to share and gain knowledge while working on business challenges in such critical areas as high-tech, biotech, clean technology, and communications, with an emphasis on early stage ventures and their growth.“Israel, like MIT, is a global leader and a center of innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Jacob Cohen, senior associate dean for undergraduate and master’s programs at MIT Sloan School of Management.“For many years, our MIT and MIT Sloan students have expressed strong desire to decode the unique factors that make Israel the start- Up nation. To address this demand, Christine Ortiz, MIT dean for graduate students and director of MISTI Israel, and I launched this new Action Learning Lab offering, which provides an opportunity for students to do a deep dive into the Israeli ecosystem by working on strategic projects for Israel’s most innovative start-ups,” he said.Teams of MIT Sloan MBAs have been working with thriving Israeli start-ups that have built dynamic business models and are looking to expand regionally and globally.Through MIT Sloan’s Israel Lab, host companies gain insights and expertise into critical areas such as strategic growth, new market entry, pricing, marketing, benchmarking, fund-raising, and financial strategy.While students have unprecedented opportunities to apply their cutting edge classroom learning to global business markets in real time.This past month, teams composed of four second-year MBA students studying at MIT, have been working on-site at Israeli host companies including Amdocs, Consumer Physics, Highcon and Windward.The student teams have been working with these companies remotely from MIT Sloan since September.Following their full-time work on site at the Israeli companies throughout January, the students will collaborate with these companies to finalize their projects’ and determine the deliverables their teams will create to be presented to company in the spring.
The Israel Lab is offered in collaboration with MIT’s MISTI-Israel Program, which launched in 2008 and provides internship opportunities for students in companies and research as well as offers courses on Israel, its hi-tech industry and culture.Since 2000, the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-LAB) student teams have delivered insight and analysis to over 375 startup and growing companies selected to take part in the program on more than 500 projects located in 50-plus emerging and frontier markets around the world.G-LAB is one among a growing portfolio of Action Learning projects taking place at MIT and across the world.