Intensive training for Latin American centennials to learn from Israel’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

SHIFT, an Israeli innovation program, for young people between 17 and 26 years old

The innovation program and search for business opportunities in Israel, Innovation Experience, announced this week that it will be selecting young people to participate in Shift, an intensive 6-month training to learn from the Israeli entrepreneurial ecosystem, the well-known Startup Nation. It is aimed at 150 young people between 17 and 26 years. There is a scholarship fund available of USD 1.5 million.

Its organizers have the objective of generating an intensive training program under the Singularity University model (a learning and innovation community located in Silicon Valley -on a NASA base-). Will have workshops and classes by academics and global experts from different industries.

Various actors in the Israeli ecosystem, such as startups and professors from prestigious world universities (such as IDC, the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, a private research university in Israel) will come together to launch this project aimed at young Latin Americans. Thus, Shift will train 150 centennials in innovation and entrepreneurship to develop an innovation hub in Latin America, which will coexist with Israel.

This country is known globally as the Startup Nation, with more startups per capita than any other country in the world. Israel has managed to position itself as the global hub of innovation and its technologies and developments are applied throughout the world.

About the program

It is a training program “designed to learn from real cases and successful methodologies to how to become an entrepreneur with a global vision and impact,” he explains to Infobae Ryan Fain, founder of Innovation Experience.

The idea arose, he continues to explain, after thousands of entrepreneurs have known the ecosystem and suggested that it is necessary to train and educate young people from the beginning. The program will reach Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico in order to create a regional network for the participants. “The objective is to learn from successful businessmen and companies, both in Israel and in Latin America, combining it with proven methodologies that increase the level of success in project development,” adds Fain.

The Scholarships that will be awarded will cover up to 70% of the cost of the program. “The idea is to triple the current quota to generate a true Hub at the regional level ”, says Fain. According to him, “big businessmen” from the region have already applied themselves as “Shift Ambassadors” (ambassadors of the program) to transmit their experience to young people in the local market and help them identify areas where there are weaknesses, to find opportunities.

“In the Latin market there is great creativity and the technical level is very high, combined with methodology will result in the creation of hundreds of companies with the potential to become unicorns”Assured Infobae Damián Katz, another of the founders of the organization.

Enrollment for scholarships is from now on and will apply from the web de Shift. In March 2021, the program will begin that combines a virtual academy in innovation with Israeli methodology, with meetings with the most relevant entrepreneurs in Latin America; and a week-long immersion program in Israel to meet the entrepreneurs in the first person (face-to-face encounters with the founders of the most relevant startups globally.

The 6-month training will include micro-classes on demand. Twice a week, with theoretical content by different Israeli specialists working in the most important companies in the world, providing tools to solve “real problems”.

On the other hand, once a month, there will be a meeting with a Shift Ambassador, talking about their industries, challenges and vision of the future. Alejandro Melamed, internationally recognized as a speaker, executive coach and confidential advisor, as well as a disruptive consultant and a reference in the future of work, he will be one of the ambassadors. On the other hand, Julián Gurfinkiel, founder of Turismocity, which has been the largest meta-search engine for flights and hotels in Argentina, will also be an ambassador.

Each month the participants will have a virtual meeting with an Israeli businessman, to learn stories and cases of entrepreneurs, investors and scientists who have succeeded globally. At the end of the first stage, the participants will travel to Israel. This way they will be able to have a greater immersion in the Israeli ecosystem. When they return they will continue the activities to “apply their ideas in real projects”, they point out.