Israel and Sweden are two global innovation leaders. 

• Both countries are continuously ranked as top innovations leaders globally, placing among the top 10 in rankings such as the Global Innovation Index (GII), the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and the Bloomberg Innovation Index (BII). 
• Israel itself is the number one country globally in terms of VC Investment per capita and as a % of GDP. The Swedish capital Stockholm on the other hand has produced more billion-dollar “unicorn” companies per capita than any other region behind Silicon Valley. 
• Together, these two countries account for a substantial part of patents issued globally, with Sweden recently being ranked number 2 in patents per capita and Israel number 5. 

Being at the forefront of the innovation game, Israel and Sweden face common challenges in maintaining and developing their high-tech industries. 

• Both countries need to constantly innovate in order to drive economic growth and secure global competitiveness. 
• Being two of the world’s innovation leaders, Israel and Sweden form natural partners for collaboration on how to improve innovation capabilities and further strengthen industrial eco-systems. 
• In order to proactively secure global competitiveness and maintain positions as global innovation leaders, Israel and Sweden have jointly launched the Israel-Sweden Innovation Initiative. 

The Connector is a platform for bilateral cooperation on innovation. 

• The Connector is an industrial R&D partnering platform with the objective to increase high-technology R&D projects between Israel and Sweden.
• The initiative gathers the most technology intensive and advanced MNEs, SMEs and academia on yearly basis and issues calls for R&D project proposals between Israeli and Swedish organizations.