What do cherry tomatoes, USB keys, e-readers and digital printing technology, drip irrigation,antivirus software and SodaStream have in common? All are inventions from Israel, a country ranked number two for innovation according to the World Economic Forum’s 2016-17 Global Competitiveness Report. With more than 6000 active start-ups, entrepreneurs regularly praise the business culture of this buzzing hub as a collaborative and transparent one where “knowledge sharing is the norm”, says Nir Zohar of cloud-based web development platform Wix.com. “We think of competitors as colleagues.”
It’s this philosophy that’s at the core of Tikkun Olam Makers. Directly translating to Repairing the World in Hebrew, it is a global non-partisan, non-profit movement that unites “need knowers” (people affected by disabilities) with volunteer “makers” such as industrial designers, engineers, hardware developers, coders, programmers, woodworkers and health professionals with the goal of developing assistive technology that addresses their specific needs. Founded by Arnon Zamir and Josh Gottesman of the Reut Group, it was granted $70,000 by Google last year.
Read the full article by Carli Phillips at The Australian (subscriber only).