Last update - 00:00 13/02/2007
Viewpoint: Let's get together
By Helge Sander
Innovation, specialization and tight global cooperation are some of the key success factors for small national economies such as Denmark and Israel. In a world of emerging new economic and technology superpowers, including China and India - where both costumers and companies are operating on a global level - small countries with limited resources should focus on constantly being at the forefront, basing their comparative advantage and growth on their most valuable assets - human talent. A main objective of Denmark's government is to promote Danish innovation by establishing close ties to leading global "hot spots" of innovation and creative thinking.
Following my recent visit to Israel with a delegation of leading Danish R&D professionals from the life sciences and IT sectors, I'm convinced that one of the ways for Denmark to keep its competitive innovation edge is by tightening the ties between the technology-intensive industries of our two countries.
The mutual synergies of both Israel and Denmark in tightening these ties are quite obvious in especially two sectors, namely life sciences and IT, where both countries hold a leading and unique position.
Denmark has developed one of the strongest life science clusters in Europe, with a mature industry and a home for several global leaders. It has a dense group of universities, hospitals and companies in biotech, medtech and pharma, with many of them R&D-based. Denmark is the world's leader in biotech patents per capita, and we have the third-largest commercial drug development pipeline in Europe in absolute terns.
Medicon Valley, located in the greater Copenhagen and southern Sweden area, is home to the lion's share of Scandinavia's pharmaceutical industry, and is Europe's fastest growing biotech cluster in terms of products under development. Another key component is our universities. Danish universities hold strong research traditions, and are the home to R&D-based life sciences companies - each in its own area of unique competencies
The Israeli life sciences sector could greatly benefit from cooperating with the mature Danish industry in commercializing ideas and products. With hundreds of companies, the majority of them being young start-ups, and a global powerhouse for new products and patents coming from both the private and public sector, such a linkage is a guaranteed win-win situation for both sides. Combining Danish long-term thinking and proven capabilities with Israel's "out-of-the-box" approach and impressive pipeline of new ideas and technologies undoubtedly harbors great potential.
In the IT sector, on the other hand, industry maturity is on the Israeli side. Israel is a global leader, second only to the Silicon Valley in terms of technology companies, M&As and successful IPOs. With one of the most advanced VC industries and R&D centers for most of the leading global players, the country can be of high strategic importance for Danish IT companies.
However, with more than 100,000 employees, including almost 10 percent in R&D, the Danish IT industry maintains some unique capabilities and highly sophisticated state-of the-art companies that Israeli companies could also benefit from through cooperation. Strong Danish IT clusters include wireless and mobile technologies, radio frequency technologies, embedded software, test equipment, chip-set reference designs, mobile business solutions, e-government solutions, and, last but not least, gaming.
The Danish government wishes to tighten formal and informal ties between Israeli and Danish researchers and developers, especially in these two sectors. Our initial step would be to finalize a bilateral agreement between Denmark and Israel based on the establishment of a joint committee for supporting cooperative R&D projects.
Helge Sander is Denmark's Science, Technology and Innovation Minister