Peter High, writing at Forbes, interviews Paretz Lavie, president of the Isreal Institute of Technology, also known as Technon. Lavie explains how the university has become a hotbed of entrepreneurship:

I have been asked this question many, many times and I have come to the conclusion that a world class university that plays such a major role in the economy of its environment or its state must have three ingredients: excellent students, excellent faculty members, and this is obvious, but it must have also a third ingredient and it is not so clear when you think about universities. This is a statement of mission. A mission statement must be part of the DNA of the university. […]

Being entrepreneurial and being innovative is affected by a multitude of factors. First, how the student or the entrepreneur is educated. The ability to take risk or the ability to sustain failure is very important. Remember, among startups only one in ten is successful. Some entrepreneurs are successful only in their seventh or eighth attempt, so you must be resilient to failures. The need to achieve is very important. These are characteristics of sometimes immigrants as you said yourself, or people who need to live in an environment or a neighborhood that constantly challenges them. What you can do in order to direct them or to make them a better entrepreneur is to give them some tools. You can provide them with role models, and this is what we are doing in the Technion […]. […]

You cannot rely on your own knowledge, you must bridge different areas. So most of the research centers in the Technion now are interdisciplinary.