BGU’s Bengis Center for
Entrepreneurship & Innovation of the Guilford Glazer Faculty of
Business and Management hosted representatives from around the world for the
first International
Bengis Roundtable last week to discuss how to teach innovation
and entrepreneurship and how to maximize academic-industry collaborations.
Delegates from Brazil, China, the
UK, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel discussed best practices for teaching
and integrating innovation into the academic setting and university-industry
relations. Upon hearing about the roundtable, Francisco
Carvalho de Arruda Coelho, Vice Secretary of Science, Technology and Higher Education, State
Government of Ceara, Brazil organized his own delegation to attend in addition
to another delegation from Brazil.
BGU’s Prof. Dafna Schwartz,
Chairperson and Director of the Bengis Center and Prof. (Emer.) Raphael Bar-El
organized the event.
Presentations of particular
interest included:
“Enabling Female
Entrepreneurs: Multinational
Corporations Engage with a Global Challenge”
Prof. Linda Scott is Emeritus DP
World Chair for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oxford. She was
chosen as one of the top 25 World Thinkers of 2015 by the UK’s Prospect Magazine
for her leadership in women’s economic empowerment.
“The Role of a Development
Bank in Supporting Innovation”
Prof. Marcos Costa Holanda is the
President of Banco do Nordeste (the Bank of Northeast of Brazil-BNB), a
development bank established by the Government of Brazil in 1952 to support the
economic development of the nine states of the Northeast region of Brazil (today
encompassing about 50 million inhabitants).
Dr. Carlos Eduardo Siqueira Gaspar
is currently the Chief Innovation Officer of Banco do Nordeste do
Brasil.
“The Global Evolution of
Cambridge’s Crossover Model of Innovation”
Philip Cooke is a Professor at the
MohnCentre of Innovation, West Norway University of Applied Sciences.
“China-Israel Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation”
Prof. Dr. Li Zheng, the founding
director of the China-Israel Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Jilin
University, and Prof. Yang Song will speak about the activities being
conducted as part of the framework of the joint entrepreneurship and innovation
center that was established recently with BGU.
Other speakers of note included:
Prof. Tsvi Vinig of Amsterdam University and Prof. Stephen Roper, Director of the Enterprise Research Centre, the UK’s national SME
research center.
The international delegations also
toured significant places in Israel’s Negev region, such as the Advanced
Technologies Park adjacent to the University. BGU is a founding partner in the
Park.