Israel Innovation 2.0

During the week of July 4, 2010, Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, raised $350 million. The Silicon Valley-based fund has invested in several Israeli companies over the years including Check Point, Bhive Ltd., P-cube, and Imperva. IBM Israel and the EU will be partnering open source and cloud technologies to improve the efficiency of EU governments and Amdocs and OpTier are partnering to make OpTier’s business transaction management (BTM) more widely available. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Evogene Castor Oil Demonstrates Suitability as Biojet Feedstock

2. TaKaDu has VCs buzzing about smart water monitoring

Investment and Economy
3. Venrock showcases VC trend, raises small $350M fund

4. Crisis Shmisis: Q2 2010 Closes with 40 deals and more than $400 million raised in Israel (Deal Summary)

5. Soho OS Lands $1M, Opens Business Management Suite To All Small Businesses

Information Technology
6. IBM, EU partner on open source projects

7. Amdocs Teams Up with OpTier

8. MiniFrame Introduces New SoftXpand Product for the Consumer Market

Miscellaneous
9. Palestinians, Israelis Come Together Through Entrepreneurship

10. Empeeric To Unleash Social Media Box For Sites

11. Israeli Army Takes EBay as Inspiration to Cut Inventory Waste

12. State of Israel? There’s an app for that

Illuminate Ventures, an early stage VC fund outside of San Francisco,  recently released a white paper on the performance of female entrepreneurs in tech in the U.S. The paper helps support previous research that shows higher success rates of ventures that are lead by women.

Some of Illuminate’s key findings include:

Fewer Failures: Despite often being capital-constrained, women-owned businesses are more likely to survive the transition from raw start-up to established company than the average.

Growing Influence in Tech: Women-owned or led firms are the fastest growing sector of new venture creation in the U.S., growing at five times the rate of all new firms between 1997 and 2006 – now representing nearly 50% of all privately held businesses.

Expanded IP Contributions: From 1985 to 2005, the annual number of U.S. female-invented fractional software patents increased 45-fold – three times the average growth rate in that sector.

Impact of Women Investors: Women now represent just over 15 percent of angel investors, but just 5%-7% of partner-level high-tech venture capital investors in the U.S. Firms with women investment partners are 70 percent more likely to lead an investment in a woman entrepreneur than those with only male partners.

Although these numbers are lower in Israel, efforts are continuing to be made to change that. Earlier today the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Google hosted “TECHLEADERS: Becoming a person of influence” in Tel Aviv. The event was a workshop that focused on helping women build the skills they need to break through into positions of leadership.

Note: To view Illuminate’s other key findings or to get the full paper, click here.

Image via Sprengben [why not get a friend].

During the week of June 13th, news broke that IBM is in talks to buy Israel’s Storwize. A professor has found a way to develop potato batteries that can provide cheap power and collaboration between high-tech companies in Israel and India is expected to increase. For these stories and more, see this week’s headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Israel a Model for Alternative Energy

2. Israeli-developed boiled potato batteries may provide cheap power

Investments and Economy
3. Israel Economy Grows 3.6% in First Quarter on Exports (Update2)

4. Israeli, Indian high-tech industries to collaborate

5. IBM negotiating purchase of Israeli startup

Information Technology
6. Anobit breaks MLC flash barrier

7. Fighting PC Delays, Hourglass by Hourglass (Soluto)

8. 9 Israel-Based Female Tech Entrepreneurs on Twitter

9. Emblaze rubbishes Else rumours

Miscellaneous
10. More gender equality at Israeli workplaces than rest of OECD, study shows

11. The best company to work for in Israel is American

12. Playing games on Microsoft’s Kinect is a blast (hands-on videos)

13. Israel high-tech billionaire gives millions to make lecturers nicer