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Before this trip, I thought I knew a lot about Israel. I’ve been to Israel about 20 times since 2001, when we acquired HP Indigo and launched our digital printing press and graphics business.

And I knew Israel has one of the world’s top startup scenes, but meeting the people who are part of this startup culture was eye-opening. The sheer level of activity, raw innovation, and government support is impressive.

It’s not surprising startups in clusters like SOSA have made Israel a global name in tech innovation.

Culture of innovation

I have a great appreciation for the business culture in Israel. It’s an in-your-face, direct, passionate culture. There’s tremendous energy and entrepreneurial spirit driving Israel’s current wave of startups, but I’ve seen that energy since I first started coming to Israel.

Israel has always had national strengths in education, R&D, government-industry ties and visionary business leaders. That’s what puts it on the leading edge of innovation. We knew that when we first invested in Israel’s digital printing press technology in 2001.

Today, HP has thousands of employees in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and we ship over a billion dollar in graphics products from Israel every year. HP Labs and HP Tech Ventures are both co-located in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.

And today, Israel is also a global leader in data analytics, software, design, and cybersecurity. Those are all areas where HP Tech Ventures is looking to invest.

HP Tech Ventures

At SOSA last month, the young tech leaders and students I met were very interested in future technology. At HP, we talk about developing technologies for Blended Reality, where the 2D digital world flows seamlessly into the 3D physical world and computer interfaces are ubiquitous and immersive.

The young tech leaders I met in Israel were fascinated by the prospect of developing technologies for that future. They want to change the world, and that’s what makes HP interesting to them. We can help them become the next big thing.

I heard a lot of exciting ideas at SOSA, but the question I heard the most was: “How can my idea scale?”

HP wants to help entrepreneurs like those at SOSA go to market on a global scale. HP Tech Ventures – launched in May under the leadership of my colleague Andrew Bolwell – pursues strategic investments and partnerships in future technologies such as 3D transformation, immersive computing, hyper-mobility, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and smart machines.

We invest more than capital in the startups we partner with through HP Tech Ventures. We leverage our channel and distribution partners, as well as our manufacturing and supply chain relationships to help startups scale quickly.

After all, no one company, even one with HP’s unparalleled expertise and assets can transform the $12 trillion global manufacturing industry alone. That’s why we’ve developed our 3D printers with an ecosystem of partners, based on an open materials and software platform, to spur innovation in new materials and lower barriers to adoption across industries.

Open innovation platform

Bringing a technology like 3D printing to market take an ecosystem of leading manufacturers, collaboration partners and innovators like those I met with in Israel. SOSA was just one incubator I visited on this trip, I also met VCs and tech entrepreneurs working on electrically conductive ink, software that can recognize 3D content for shape-based search, and techniques for even faster 3D print times.

Israel has startups working on breakthroughs in image processing, data manipulation, and advanced materials – all areas that are applicable to 3D printing. From where I was standing in South Tel Aviv last month, there were literally 500 startups in walking distance.

We can’t wait to work with them.