Successful cooperation with Israel


At Deutsche Telekom’s Innovation Day, the company presented initial successes of close cooperation with start-up companies in Israel – going from ideas to mature products in just one year.

Oct 30, 2007

 

 

Hamid Akhavan: “Israel has earned its reputation as ‘Silicon Wadi’ due to its strong high-tech industry and tremendous innovative power.”

 

Those attending gained insight into the innovative solutions developed by DT together with Israeli start-up companies, from the initial idea to mature products. Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International and DT Board Member responsible for Innovation and Product Development, emphasized the significance of the cooperation with Israeli companies: “Israel has earned its reputation as ‘Silicon Wadi’ due to its strong high-tech industry and tremendous innovative power.” He continued to say that DT was therefore closely observing the country's ICT industry and would continue the intensive partnership in the future as well.

 

Rachel Roei from the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, talked about the innovative high-tech culture in Israel and its significance for her country. She quoted Chaim Weizmann, the first President of the State of Israel, who said of his country: “Intelligence is the only raw material we have.” Roei said Israel has a highly successful tradition as a location for research and development. This tradition includes the internationally recognized high quality of Israeli universities and the manner in which research results are consistently transformed into marketable products. “Partnerships with international corporations like Deutsche Telekom are also very important for us and we in the Ministry of Trade support them wherever possible.”

 

Traffic-jam warnings, hospital logistics and picture language

Christopher Schläffer, Group Product and Innovation Officer of Deutsche Telekom, provided insight into the process, organization and goals of innovation management: "Maintaining the balance between technological feasibility and actual customer needs is the essential aspect of managing innovation." He used Israel as an example to explain how the innovations presented had been initiated, developed and realized. Schläffer went on to say that out of over 200 innovative high-tech and start-up companies, an extensive selection process was used to single out and link those companies that it considered the most interesting for the company and its strategic business areas.

 

One of these projects was initiated in cooperation with T-Systems and Decell Technologies. With this innovation, traffic jams can be identified by evaluating information about the movement of cell phones within one cell site, and the owners of the cell phones can then be notified. At the same time, the system provides information about alternative public transportation routes. A WiFi-based development by the company AeroScout enables users to locate items that have been equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. This technology provides hospitals with more efficient logistics when it comes to managing hospital beds, for example. Another clever innovation presented was Zlango. The SMS icon language by the company of the same name is available for everyone to test on T-Online's beta portal (www.beta.t-online.de). According to Zlango’s inventors, the system is set to replace Esperanto as an internationally understandable language.

 

The initial results of the collaboration were so promising for Deutsche Telekom that the company wants to intensify its cooperation with high-tech and start-up information and communications technology (ICT) companies in Israel. An agreement signed by representatives of the Israeli government and Deutsche Telekom in the presence of CEO René Obermann in Jerusalem at the beginning of October will contribute to an even better point of departure.

 

Link to the Deutsche Telekom original Press Releases