R EPUBLIC
B1 ,1 1S4 2fEr
BIRD page 41
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810 646/7050
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810 229/7440
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America, sounded far from the
easiest thing in the world."
Personally, there seemed to be
even less logic for Mr. Mlaysky
to take the job of executive di-
rector of BIRD.
"I really wasn't that closely at-
tached to Israel and I didn't see
any reason to bring three Amer-
ican teen-age kids and a gentile
wife living in Lincoln, Mass., to
Israel," he says.
But, after being "badgered"
into accepting the job, he packed
up his family and headed to Is-
rael with a two-year contract and
an equivalent leave of absence
from Mobil/Tyco.
That was in 1979. What kept
him at BIRD for so long, he says,
was the sense that he possessed
a unique amount of experience
from which Israeli companies
could learn.
"At BIRD, I knew I could
make a contribution to many Is-
raeli early-stage companies," he
says. "After 19 years of Tyco —
starting with two guys in an of-
fice in downtown Waltham,
Mass., building the company, go-
ing onto the New York Stock Ex-
change, going through
catastrophes, the agonies and
the ecstasies, and becoming the
president of the company — I
had accumulated an unusual
amount of experience.
"I had made almost every pos-
sible mistake you can make in
the field of new-company devel-
opment and venture capital.
"So I found I really struck a
chord. I found it rather empa-
thetic talking to Israeli entre-
preneurs, and fairly established
companies, trying to explain to
them how Americans operate,
and the advantages in forming
strategic Alliances.
"I basically said that no Israeli
company could succeed without
an American partner. That was
exaggeration for the sake of em-
phasis, but it turned out not to
be all that exaggerated.
"If you look back at the corn-
Then another phone call came. panies that have succeeded, al-
This time, it was a new organi- most all of them had an
zation — the Israel-U.S. Bina- American partner at the earliest
tional Industrial Research and stages."
During Mr. Mlaysky's tenure,
Development Foundation
BIRD supported 300 projects.
(BIRD) — with a job offer.
The organization, created by With an initial $110 million en-
the Carter administration, was dowment, half from the United
designed to link Israeli research States and half from Israel, it
and development companies funded 50 percent of the cost of
with big U.S. firms to develop the projects.
Many projects have turned
mutually beneficial business
into the cornerstones of now-
ideas.
When U.S. executives first thriving Israeli companies, and
heard about the venture, Mr. have benefited the economies of
Mlaysky says, "We all thought it both countries.
"If you look at the taxes that
was a big joke. Israel had a very
small annual income at that have been generated for the two
governments from the sales of
time.
"It's quite difficult within a products supported by BIRD, the
company in the United States to entire endowment was paid back
transfer something from the several years ago," Mr. Mlaysky
R&D department to the produc- says.
"So now BIRD is running for
tion department. To try to do this
between two unaffiliated com- free. It's running on two sources
panies, one in Israel and one in of income: the interest on the en-
It turned out that he was be-
ing invited to join a delegation of
American technical executives
on a trip to Israel. There, they
would meet a corresponding
group of Israeli executives, form-
ing a special committee to dis-
cuss with them how the Jewish
state could make the transition
to domestic industry from strict-
ly military technology.
The delegation included
"heavy hitters," as Mr. Mlaysky
puts it, from companies far larg-
er than his own, such as Xerox,
AT&T, IBM, Lockheed, Dupont,
and Intel.
"The reason they added me, I
discovered later, was that many
of these companies had annual
sales larger than Israel's gross
domestic product," Mr. Mlaysky
says.
"So they thought that maybe
there was sort of a mismatch be-
tween the guy who was running
IBM's research and develop-
ment, and someone who has
three scientists working for him
in Holon. In that way, my Tyco
laboratory experience turned out
to be relevant."
At that point, "Israel had bare-
ly begun its assault on the high-
tech citadels of the world," but
companies like Elbit, Elron, and
Scitex had begun building re-
search and development opera-
tions, and Mr. Mlaysky was
surprised and impressed by the
potential.
In the framework of the com-
mittee, Mr. Mlaysky, who had
never before been to Israel, trav-
eled there several times.
Many of today's
Israeli high-tech
companies are BIRD
spin-offs or
subsidiaries.
(-/