R EPUBLIC B1 ,1 1S4 2fEr BIRD page 41 "We were treated professionally and courteously throughout the process." - Ivan and Kathy Reimer, Lake Orion, MI "Very thorough, friendly and helpful. As a first time buyer I had several questions and Republic was always willing to assist me." - Susan Ebbing, Royal Oak, MI "There should be more people around like the people at Republic." - Lurlene McMillion, Novi, MI "Excellent service as usual! Thank you." - Michele Bureau, Walled Lake, MI "Understanding the financial world and it's processes can be quite perplexing I was treated with respect. This is our third mortgage with Republic." - Renee Koch, Fowlerville, MI Bloomfield Hills 810 646/7050 Brighton 810 229/7440 Plymouth 313 459/7800 Farmington Hills 810 932/4701 Rochester 810 656/4200 Grand Rapids 616 285/3200 Southgate 313 287/0400 Nashville 615 371/5854 Washtenaw 313 995/4499 Miracle Mission II: We're In It Heart And Sole. When you buy a pair of men's or women's shoes at Sherman's during March or April and mention this ad, we'll donate 10% of the proceeds to the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. WOMEN'S $8 9 $E 1 o0 Sherman Shoes The store that fits you. The shoes that move you. Birmingham 810/646-8431 • Eastland 313/839-0877 • Laurel Park Place 313/591-7800 • Southland 313/287-4120 Somerset 810/643-6443 • Twelve Oaks 810/349-7676 • Urban Walker (Downtown Birmingham) 810/540-3468 MICHIGAN MIRACLE MISSION MAY 7-17 1995 For phone orders call 1-800-421-SHOE. Monday-Friday, 8:30-5:30 pm. 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. (-/