CTalk
“To get Israel to a more precise position in biotech, we need to educate our people to become better managers”
Dr. Lior Shaltiel, CEO of NurExone Biologic, speaks to CTech at Calcalist, CTech and Bank Leumi’s Mind The Tech conference in Berlin.
Dr. Lior Shaltiel, CEO of NurExone Biologic
(Video: Encore)
Speaking as Israel positions itself as a “biotech nation,” Dr. Lior Shaltiel, CEO of NurExone Biologic, told CTech that while the country has strong scientific foundations, it struggles with follow through. “Biology is always secondary to high tech,” he said. “I do think we have a strong scientific background, good universities, very strong tech transfer from those universities, and we create a lot of innovation but somehow we fail to execute.” Shaltiel pointed to gaps in funding and education as central barriers to building a more mature biotech ecosystem.
According to Shaltiel, the industry’s long development cycles demand a different kind of managerial skillset than traditional tech. “In order to get Israel to a more precise position in biotech, we need to educate our people to become better managers, especially in this very challenging environment of biotech, which is a fully regulated market. You develop a product for ten or fifteen years without any revenue, so it’s very hard as a manager to pass all those death valleys and get the company to execute and sell.”
He said that strengthening managerial capabilities will be key to turning Israel’s scientific innovation into sustained commercial success.
You can watch the entire exchange in the video above.
