International business relationships were launched Thursday at Johns Hopkins University.
Representatives from 14 Israeli health and technology companies met with area entrepreneurs at JHU?s Cancer Research Building. About 150 people attended the all-day MarketReach America Conference, which focused on introducing the foreign firms to the Maryland and American markets.
“Our message to these companies is Maryland is not a place ? it?s the destination,” said AbbaPoliakoff, chairman of the Maryland/Israel Development Center.
The center works to build bonds between U.S. and Israeli companies. U.S. companies mentor the Israeli firms, offering advice on entering the U.S. market and helping the companies establish American contacts.
“The U.S. market is the pot at the end of the rainbow for Israeli companies,” Poliakoff said. U.S biotechnology revenues were almost $48 billion in 2005, according the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.
Maryland, with resources such Johns Hopkins Hospital, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, serves as an obvious starting point for foreign companies, said Barry Bogage, executive director of the Maryland/Israel Development Center.
“There are literally tens of thousands of biomedical specialists that foreign companies can recruit from to staff U.S. offices,” Bogage said.
Representatives from U.S. and Israeli companies had a chance to network for about an hour on Thursday, during a corporate partnering session. The session was similar to “speed dating,” Bogage said.
“You have to spend enough time with someone to know if you want to spend more time with them,” Bogage said.
