Israel's Council for Higher Education (CHE) and its Planning and Budgeting Committee is issuing a tender (aka a call for bids), open until August 30th, for a company with experience in commercializing early stage technologies to enter agreements with Israeli institutes of higher education that do not have the wherewithal to commercialize such technologies on their own. The CHE hopes that this program will help these institutions develop new revenue streams that presumably will free up money for other things.
The company that wins the tender will receive subsidies from the government to cover some of the development costs and will receive a share of the profits. The company must sign agreements with 3 non-university institutions the first year and 3 more the second year. After that time, the company must maintain agreements with any 6 government funded institutions.
Earlier this year, in the United States, bills were introduced in the House and Senate:
to establish an American Innovation Bank as an "independent agency," that will "promote the commercialization of science and engineering discoveries" by "provid[ing] grants, loans, and other assistance to eligible entities and individuals to enable the entities and individuals to perform the necessary research and development to make research discoveries attractive for private investment that will lead to the development of new companies, products, and jobs."... The Bank is intended, among other things, to help companies navigate the "valley of death" where university-related start-up companies go through initial funding monies before having sufficient experimental results to attract venture capital or large company investment or commercialize their products. One of the bills' proponents, Senator Gillibrand, called the bill "common-sense legislation [that] will help develop scientific breakthroughs into cutting-edge businesses and new jobs."
What is interesting is that in the US scheme, priority of funding will be granted to institutions already receiving "a significant amount of Federal funding" from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE) or "other agencies", that "do not have a significant proof of concept fund already established at the entity", have "established relationships" with business and industry that can commercialize the technology, that have "an institutional environment that is supportive of business development" and "demonstrate the appropriate administrative capacity" to encourage patenting, companies, products or jobs from the grants.
It looks like they are going to give the money to those who may need it least whereas, in Israel the plan is to give it to those who need it most. Perhaps the difference is that in the US the new program calls for just giving out money, whereas in Israel, the plan is to have a private company come forward and share the cost with the government and reap the rewards. Therefore the US views their scheme as an investment and wants to ensure a return on that investment, while in Israel, the goal is to help underprivileged schools with good technology to be able to bring their ideas to market.
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