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Businesses from the UK cyber tech industry recently visited Israel as part of Innovate UK’s Global Business Accelerator Programme (GBAP).
The overall programme of 18 technology focused visits to 10 countries is managed by the Enterprise Europe Network and aims to help highly innovative technology businesses identify international partners for future collaboration and gain insight into innovation in other countries.
Pitching practise
The EEN team, led by South West Digital and Creative sector lead, Gabriella Cox, ran pre-visit and in-country briefings. These workshops provided delegates with market information, advice and how to do business in the Israeli cyber sector and training on how to improve pitching skills.
Clive Stainton, Perimeter Group, said:
“The pre-visit workshop and support provided by EEN whilst we were in Israel was excellent. They helped me understand this market and position myself in the best possible way to do business.
“A tip I would give to anyone going on a technology visit is be straight with contacts you meet - they will see right through bluff and bluster and will not respect you for it. If you are straight with them, they will be straight with you”.
Opportunities for SMEs
Coinciding with the Cybertech Tel Aviv cyber security exhibition and conference, 15 delegates had the opportunity to meet with Israeli cyber tech companies, research centres and key stakeholders with the aim of developing strong international partnerships for future collaboration and technology exchange.
Simon Minton, co-founder of Cyber Start-up said:
“Awesome week in Tel Aviv! 2 technology partnerships kicked off & the opportunity to collaborate with the cyber innovation centre at a global bank.”
With the key message throughout the conference being the need for international collaboration to combat this global threat and create worldwide safe #cyberspace, the conference echoed EEN’s focus on building international networks through collaboration.
Delegates also visited the Taglit Innovation Centre where they were given an insight into Israeli innovation and heard from Eyal Harari, CEO of CybeRisk, about differences between doing business in Israel, US and UK and the strength of the StartUp Nation.
The visit provided delegates with the opportunity to take a step back from day to day work and focus on learning more about their customers.
Amadeo Pellicce, Warden, said:
“If there's one thing I learned this week, is that it really pays off to spend as many hours as you can with your potential customers and deeply understand them.
“IT's NOT ENOUGH to do a large number of 15m 'customer development' interviews. It's BETTER to find an excuse to spend multiple hours with each of them and become a master learner of their fears, motivations and incentives.
“Thank you to Enterprise Europe Network for inviting us to Innovate UK’s Global Business Accelerator Programme (GBAP) in Israel!”
On their final evening delegates were invited to dine at the UK Ambassador’s residence where they met senior key Israeli stakeholders for a high level discussion on how the two countries might work more closely together.
Now back in the UK, delegates are continuing to develop their relationships with the goal of working together for future collaboration.
This has been a fantastic trip. A well worth exercise in which we met a number of contacts, including a large corporate company, who we would not have been introduced if it wasn’t for EEN’s help.
John Tolhurst, Ioetec
