As countries around the globe including the United States rush to resume pre-COVID routines, there are numerous lessons learned from the time under lockdown that have enabled many to create a “new normal” that promotes growth. The mindset of clients and employees has shifted entirely, and even the routines of children have evolved, leaving the world open to finding a better approach to personal and professional development and unlocking more gates for innovation.
Similarly, with the outbreak of the pandemic, global technological processes have witnessed an evolution as well. According to a McKinsey & Co. digital survey, the rate at which companies develop digital products and services across regions has increased by seven years on average during the pandemic. In Asia, the difference is even greater, averaging the total span of stats to ten years. Technology is expected to disrupt traditional industries faster than we anticipated, so now is the time for companies to foster an innovative culture.
With isolation restrictions on the hike during the pandemic, the world now has a better understanding of the importance of human interactions in the workplace. Thus, one should encourage all employees to share their ideas in order to improve business initiatives in the ever-changing post-pandemic reality. Moreover, a bottom-up approach can provide organizations with a new perspective and increase the number of voices heard, and this is why individuals like Amit Kochavi are adopting it.
Amit, a Tel Aviv-based 25-year-old entrepreneur, philanthropist, and real estate/tech investor, couldn’t wait until after his military service to get a foothold in Israel’s thriving startup ecosystem. So, he decided to take an unusual approach to his situation, creating and launching Tech Lounge, a four-month startup accelerator.
In February, Amit was named among Forbes Israel’s 30 Under 30 list. As a result, he attended an international conference organized by Forbes Israel, which brought inspirational young people from all over the world to Israel. Amit’s vision is to establish a venture capital fund to support high school entrepreneurship all over the world.
In October, he traveled to Boston for another international conference hosted by Forbes USA’s “30 Under 30” list. At the conference, Amit was taken by great surprise to see the number of young people leading businesses and social ventures to change and improve the world as more than 7,000 young entrepreneurs gathered there to inspire and build a network of connections among entrepreneurs from around the world. During the conference, Amit described how he founded Tech Lounge four years ago when he was just in high school. His goal was to inspire young people from all over the world to pursue careers in business. Tech Lounge was founded as part of his participation as an ambassador for LEAD, Israel’s leadership development program, which brought mentors from a variety of fields into the framework, along with teams of teenagers who worked on various start-ups. Even before Amit was accepted into the program, he had a vision for his project: to establish an entrepreneurial incubator for teenagers within Tel Aviv high schools, bringing teenagers closer to high-tech. “I called for the Tech Lounge project, and to set it up, I contacted the director of the education administration at the Tel Aviv municipality, Dafna Lev, and she helped me promote it in the municipality,” he said before being accepted into the program.
Kochavi expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a social networking app called GroopMeUp. The Kochavi incubator project received a one-million-shekel budget from the Tel Aviv municipality and will be expanded to 12 additional high schools in the city in the coming year with the municipality’s support.
These days, Kochavi is the founder & CEO Cormi.com, a mobile-first workforce management platform designed to help companies manage their frontline workers. This platform provides frontline employees and deskless teams with digital tools to communicate, learn, and work efficiently. It streamlines communications, offers mobile learning and training, and simplifies digital forms and task management. Cormi.com not only boosts operational excellence but also significantly enhances the frontline employee working experience..
Amit hopes that in the coming years, technology incubators for teenagers will spread throughout the country because it will facilitate them in becoming responsible citizens of the world. It will also make them more productive and encourage them to think outside the box allowing them to develop their own ideas and generate solutions for societal issues.