CleanIsrael recently hosted ex-CEO of GE Water Jeff Garwood and ex-CTO of GE Water Dr. Rengarajan Ramesh for a roundtable discussion with CEOs of some of Israel’s leading water startups. After the event and vibrant discussion, we asked Dr. Ramesh to give his thoughts on Israel’s cleantech sector.

Israel offers great potential and opportunity for countries around the world who are facing serious water shortages as well industrial pollution of their precious water resources.  Israeli government and their policies have guided the water industry to look seriously at innovations and application of these innovations to help address their water challenges and the local water utility Merkorot has helped to ” test bed” the early technologies and help validate the   value proposition of these innovations.

The Office of Chief Scientist along with the Government has established “incubators” and helped to fund innovative ideas and provide a platform to develop innovations. These incubators take the technologies developed at the Universities and the research institutions into pilot scale which can then be commercialized through investments from other venture capital firms.

Such innovation ecosystem model is unique and has resulted in several successful ideas to be commercialized from Israel.

Based on my past five years experience working with early stage companies from Israel, it is evident that these companies have leveraged the support system provided by the Universities, government, and the industrial incubators well and this is a model that other countries can adopt and modify to meet their needs.

Collaboration and Partnership is critical for success especially for early stage start up companies. Israeli companies can benefit from collaborating with international and domestic companies to define the technology merits and value proposition early in the process to avoid hurdles later.