The Minister for Presidency, Economy and Enterprise for the Government of Andorra, and president of Innovation Hub Andorra, Jordi Gallardo, and the general director of the Israel Innovation Institute, Jonathan Menuhin, signed this afternoon a collaboration agreement to foster the development of the Andorran innovation and startups ecosystem.
The aim of this agreement is to work together in several areas that could materialize into support and assessment projects in the definition and developing of the Andorra´s Innovation and Startup Ecosystem, as well as collaborating on specific projects and initiatives related to the fields of specialization of each institute, such as mobility, agriculture, health and climate change, among others.
In this sense, Gallardo explained that “The collaboration will allow the strengthening and support of the innovation and entrepreneurship strategy with an internationally renowned actor in these topics”.
The director of Innovation Hub Andorra, Marc Pons, stated that “Israel´s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem is a reference and very strong hotspot in areas such as mobility, agriculture or health, meaning that alliances of this magnitude are of the utmost importance for us to complement current projects or areas of work in Andorra in these fields”.
Furthermore, Andorra´s potential as an international Living Lab for Open Innovation has been identified by Israel´s Startup ecosystem, as an environment of great interest to prototype and test ideas and business projects.
In addition, Menuhin highlighted that “the Israel Innovation Institute tackles global challenges such as food, transportation, health, and climate change. Solutions for these critical concerns will derive from a worldwide combination of knowledge, talents, and capabilities. This collaboration is an essential step in building an international task force to address these urgent global challenges”.
This agreement will initially last for 2 years from the moment of its signing and can be tacitly renewed annually.
The Israel Innovation Institute
The Israel Innovation Institute (NGO) was founded in 2011 with the aim of helping Israeli companies and businessmen to find solutions to global challenges and add even more strength to socio-economic development in Israel. The institute is centered on objectives that have a large public impact and strives to keep them advancing through innovation communities and open innovation processes.
This institute operates three innovation communities that work in cooperation with the Israeli Government: HealthIL: digital Health community; EcoMotion: International community for intelligent transport solutions; GrowingIL: for Ag-Tech solutions.
In 2019 they also created CatalystIL, a community of innovation managers in organizations. In 2020, the DeserTech community joined the Institute focusing on technologies designed to face the challenges presented by the desert and its surroundings, in collaboration with the Merage Israel Foundation. Recently they created the PLANETech community, along with its Israeli and international partners, to boost and provide support to the development and implementation of technologies that create economic and environmental value.
