3. Greater Rochester Enterprises, NY:
Fostering technological investment
Greater Rochester is one of the top five exporting regions per capita in the
US, and accounts for nearly seven percent of all New York State exports.
The Greater Rochester Enterprises (GRE) were looking to develop the
region and increase its foothold in healthcare and optics, by bringing
investment to Rochester or by bringing companies to relocate there.
The GRE turned to SIT to foster a relationship with technologies from Israel,
a country renowned for its start-up companies.
Impact
Teva Pharmaceuticals, an international pharmaceutical company
headquartered in Israel, acquired a company in a $25M investment.
New manufacturing site in NY for the Strauss Group, Israel’s second
largest dairy.
Angel investor of $3M for an Israeli start-up.
Relocation of an Israeli office to Rochester.
4. Project InCiTe, New York:
Developing creative youth programs
Reaching teens of today is no easy feat. The Board of Jewish Education in
New York was alarmed when numbers showed their programs were
attracting less than 15% of their target population. They needed to inject
new content to reconnect with their teenage audience and engage them
in activities.
Impact
Partnering with SIT led to the creation of Project InCiTE, a creativity and
Innovation Fellowship Seminar. Educators were trained in SIT’s creative
thinking techniques and mentored by both SIT and leaders from the
field of education. Using this new knowledge and know-how, fellows
collectively created two dozen programs to refresh the organization’s
offering and bring back the numbers they had lost.
SIT offered a systematic approach to train people in skills that allowed
them to open their minds to new possibilities. I was skeptic at first, but
even at the end of the first sessions new ideas continued to emerge. There
was something to having this systematic approach that was yielding
results already in the short term. Immediately it started opening our
minds to new possibilities.
David Bryfman, Director, New Center for Collaborative Leadership
5. Ministry of Economy & Foreign Trade:
Developing an innovative bureaucracy
The Ministry of Economy and Foreign Trade is responsible for attracting
foreign businesses and investment to within its borders, in a highly
competitive environment.
Like most government offices, the ministry is bound by (often lengthy)
procedures and bureaucracy to maintain quality honest trade. Yet they
felt that finding the right places to inject innovation could give them a leg
up, and entice corporations to do business in their country versus others.
Impact
Undergoing SIT training, the Ministry gained skills to help them leverage
their small size, enabling them to respond faster and more efficiently.
Long term results lead to:
Identifying opportunities for innovation in the services and offer
they provide as well as in the way the Ministry operates internally.
Building an internal capability among Ministry staff for applying and
leading innovation
Getting internal stakeholder buy-in for instigating change.
6. Singapore Ministry of Education:
Applying innovative solutions to academic challenges and social
routines
The Ministry of Education in Singapore partnered with SIT to help students
and faculty members instigate change academically and socially.
The program was held at Clementi Town Secondary School, with a team of
teachers and students of different academic levels.
Impact
Using SIT tools, the team created new and useful ways they could perform
every day tasks differently:
Academics – New approach for tackling homework and writing essays
Socially – Better management of lines at the school canteen/kiosk,
innovative measures for disciplining
Charity – Using existing resources to foster better and rewarding
relationships with elderly people in the surrounding neighborhood
Science: Developing “Why didn’t I think of that before?” types of ideas
for the Young Inventor Competition
7. Israel’s Ministry of Welfare:
Improving effectiveness of social services
SIT ran a series of Innovation Workshops directly with Israel's Ministry of
Welfare aimed at developing innovative models for improving the
effectiveness of the Ministry's work with social workers, management of
information and decision-making.
Impact
Working with the city of Nazereth Illit, the capital city of the Galilee, led to
four different routes for creating change to better the lives of its residents.
The core developments were services designed to empower middle and
lower class residents, enabling them to understand and take control of the
benefits they deserve.
8. Constructora Bolívar, Colombia:
Making a successful venture of low income house construction
The Colombian Government requires all construction companies to engage in low
income housing, by way of promoting affordable homes to its poorer citizens. Yet, a
relatively high number of these types of projects were not completed because of
the target audience’s low monetary status and their inability to pay even the small
sum. This not only impeded achieving the housing goal, but caused tension with the
construction companies who bore the loss of money and time already invested.
One of these companies, Constructora Bolívar, suffered from 12% of unfinished
deals. They partnered with SIT to not only reduce the risk of unclosed deals, but
also to bring back customers they had lost.
Impact
Rather than approaching this sales challenge in the usual way by working on the
sales process to increase conversion, SIT led the management team to map their
current internal operational processes as a starting point for innovating.
Applying thinking tools, the team innovated a new process which solved the
existing glitches causing customers to walk away in the middle, and even shortened
the overall process. The nature of these solutions, together with creative project
management allowed for implementation of the new process within two months.
As a result, Constructora Bolívar achieved a win-win: it lowered the amount of deals
that fell through, and even increased profit margins from such projects.
9. Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv:
Developing tomorrow’s medical leaders today
The Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, a major medical faculty and the largest
hospital in Israel, realized the need to overcome the gap between the evolving
demands of medical leaders today, and the skills they are provided through
traditional training.
Sheba, together with SIT, deployed the Talpiot Medical Leadership Program, to
cultivate the brightest young physicians into an elite group of doctor-managers,
well-suited to hold leadership positions in Sheba’s future.
The fellowship focuses on managerial, clinical research, and professional
development skills.
Impact:
• A secure future management level skilled to lead the hospital in its many
departments, laboratories, and research facilities.
•Cadre of problem solvers who capably tackle complex healthcare issues.
•Heightened research recognition from Fellows’ work.
• Regular creation of process improvements (clinical and administrative), due to
the entrepreneurial spirit of Talpiot Fellows.
• Better connections with the broader medical community by leveraging Fellows'
research and activities.
10. Helping young entrepreneurs to promote themselves better
Goal:
Young Entrepreneurs Israel (YEI) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to
introducing teenagers to the business world. SIT delivered Inventive Thinking
workshops and Entrepreneurship in Advertising workshops to YEI instructors
and district managers. These methods are continuously implemented in the YEI
program. Recently, SIT mentored the YEI team to finalize their product, define a
single-minded marketing message and design their presentation for the global
competition in The Netherlands.
Impact:
•Providing a proven skill set to teens that they can carry with them to the future.
•Instilling a sense of competency in how they can use their minds.
•Silver medalist for product innovation, and gold medalist for booth and
presentation: “Batzekalo” - an innovative rolling pin that stores flour within its
body so that it can be easily shaken onto sticky dough with no fuss or mess.
11. Amdocs Software:
Before Helping them to achieve their social mission, and in
record time
Senior management of Amdocs – a leading hi tech software
company - got together for an innovation camp with SIT that
began with an impossible mission - to create the Creativity and
Innovation Center in Sderot, a relatively deprived town in the
South of Israel, all within less than 20 hours!
The Innovation Center in Sderot is now an integral part of the
After “Tachlit Program“, which serves over 70 youth at risk who have
dropped out of conventional educational establishments, and
through their program exert a positive influence on the entire
community in many ways.
For the video click here
12. Hacienda Treasury Department, Bogota Municipality, Colombia:
Making public management more efficient and friendly
Hacienda is the Treasury Department of Bogota City Council, the capital city
of Colombia, serving a population of nine million. Their work is
characterized by highly regulatory, bureaucratic processes and complex
operations - not particularly user-friendly - that often get in the way of
providing an effective and efficient service to the city residents. Most of the
staff do not feel empowered to take personal initiatives to change the way
things are. The aim of impacto-I during a period of political flux was to
create the largest possible impact in the shortest time in the operational and
cultural areas.
Impact:
SIT ran a 1-year process, principally involving the tax collection
departments, which showed that it is possible to change an existing reality of
how local government and citizens interact without spending vast sums of
money or engaging in extensive regulatory change.
This involved training a core group of 26 innovation coaches drawn from
various treasury functions who then ran 26 innovation projects
simultaneously across various departments. With the initial focus was on
the tax area, the success of the results obtained so far have led to substantial
financial savings quite quickly in a relatively short time and provide people
with the confidence to extend the process to other support areas in the
future.
13. Bat Yam Municipality, Israel:
Promoting personal entrepreneurship in education
The Bat Yam Municipality realized that the route to successful
entrepreneurship needs nurturing and support, as it entails transforming a
dream that often requires more time and money than is usually available,
and ultimately someone who will believe and encourage you.
The Municipality of Bat Yam, located in Israel just south of Tel Aviv has
developed a reputation for pioneering innovative programs in education and
wanted to provide practical support for all those pioneers engaged in
developing their vision for education. They approached SIT to help them
create a concrete program.
Impact:
•Together with SIT, the City launched the Center for Entrepreneurship in
Education. This community of entrepreneurs now has some 400+ members
who meet regularly both socially and for regular courses and one-to-one
mentoring done by SIT and center staff to help them achieve their dreams.
•Alongside these activities, the Center launched an open innovation
competition for new ventures in education which attracted over 300 entries.
• The centre runs regular programs and activities for educational
entrepreneurs designed to bring entrepreneurship into the home and school
and make it part of the daily educational experience.
14. Your SIT Contact
Veronica Rechtszaid,
Marketing Coordinator for the LatAm Team
Office: + 972-3-6070-491 | Mobile: +972-54-6655-367
veronica@sitsite.com,
SIT Head Office:
16 Tozeret Ha’aretz St.
Tel-Aviv, 67891
Israel
Phone: +972-3-6070480
Email: info@sitsite.com