Telekom-CEO René Obermann receives Leadership Award from Israel’s youngest university, Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Beer Sheva
They went to the desert when most companies looked to Israel’s high-tech hubs around Tel Aviv and in Haifa. In 2004, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, Deutsche Telekom, began cooperation with Israel’s youngest university, Ben-Gurion University (BGU), in the Southern Israeli town Beer Sheva.
Two years later, the spacious high-tech laboratories were in place and the work began. Last fall, to honor this successful and exemplary German-Israeli cooperation, Telekom CEO René Obermann was presented with the university’s ‘Ben-Gurion Leadership Award’.
Telekom CEO René Obermann received the Leadership Award in Beer Sheva
Capture the moment
“This award recognizes those leaders who see the potential for growth and development in ideas that are only just emerging,” explained the BGU Deputy Vice President and Dean of Research and Development Dan Blumberg at the ceremony in Beersheva. “Those people capture the moment and turn it into the future. Mr. Obermann is one of those people.” Upon receiving the award, Obermann accepted it “on behalf of the many people in my company and our partners. They are the visionaries.”
The Beer Sheva campus
Eight years after the move to the desert, more than a hundred researchers and students, from undergraduates to professors, are working together on cooperative network security and customer analytics projects at BGU’s T-Labs. The well-equipped laboratories and representative offices cover almost 11,000 square feet on the Beer Sheva campus. The “Advanced Technologies Park” adjacent to the university is expected to open this year and will markedly enhance the research facilities.
René Obermann with BGU President Rivka Carmi
The public-private partnership model has worked well for both parties.“ It is very difficult to create marketable products on our own”, T-Labs director Yuval Elovici claimed during a meeting with company representatives earlier in 2012. “To create spin-offs out of the laboratories, business cooperation is essential.”
At the awards ceremony René Obermann underlined that his vision for Telekom employees was that they become “entrepreneurs at heart”.
To achieve this, he encourages his employees “to be curious about how to make things better and tackle them with enthusiasm, will-power and discipline.”
BGU President Rivka Carmi called René Obermann a “leader in the spirit of David Ben-Gurion. He foresaw the central role the mobile phone would have and will continue to have”. The comparison with Ben-Gurion is an outstanding honor.
Source of inspiration
The start-up élan and risk-taking mentality ‘typical’ for Israelis is a vital source of inspiration for Deutsche Telekom. While the company cooperates with many universities, the team play with BGU is unique in its form and intensity. “At a recent trade show, we exhibited 40 innovations and many of them originated at T-Labs”, Obermann told the audience in Beer Sheva.
The foundation of BGU in 1969 was based on the vision of the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who wanted to bring life to the desert. And so it came to be, the university is now a vital engine for economic and scientific growth in the region and beyond.