Last class, we had two great lectures, which were led by Dr. Moses Miller, a Data Detective, who is doing his postdoc at the Arison School of Business, IDC Herzliya, and by Mr. Avi Issacharoff, a journalist and a Middle East analyst for The Times of Israel and news portal Walla!, and the Palestinian and Arab Affairs Correspondent for Haaretz. Avi is also Co-Creator of the Hit Series “Fauda”.

The lecture of Dr. Miller was dedicated to the subject of Innovating your way out of a crisis. Nowadays, many experts speak about the need for companies to innovate during a crisis. Dr. Miller demonstrated the importance of innovation during such an event but, unlike many others, he also emphasized the continued importance of innovation after a crisis. It requires a radically different mindset to consider not only how to survive this critical period, but also how to thrive in its aftermath.

I would like to take the Israeli education system as an example. When lockdown was enforced, the Israeli Ministry of Education faced a difficult situation, especially with primary and secondary schools. At this point, we know for a fact that Israeli education system was completely unprepared for remote education. As numbers of simultaneous users increased, the education system’s existing platforms simply crashed. Not all teachers and students had computers at home, and most didn’t know how to use platforms that support conference calls. Nevertheless, it was necessary to continue the process of education even during lockdown. The Israeli Ministry of Education immediately bought Zoom business accounts for all schools, then they taught teachers how to use Zoom. Schools provided laptops for teachers and students who didn’t have computers. Families with many children didn’t have enough computers to provide access to each child. Greater than these technical problems was the impossibility of simply moving online and, using the same format and approach, providing lessons similar to those given before the pandemic. Initially, they had no practical plan for managing the situation on the ground. The Ministry made some decisions and tried to push schools to follow them, but it didn’t work well. For example, when primary school students were allowed to come back to school, they were only allowed to study outside in small groups in open spaces. Parents, teachers, and students were very angry with this solution, because of the unpredictability of the weather and the need to move furniture back and forth. After several attempts failed simply because the situation was so different from usual and because the Ministry of Education had no knowledge or experience of dealing with this kind of situation, they made the absolutely correct decision to allow school staff to experiment and explore in practice. Teachers shared positive findings with the Ministry of Education, and it spread useful discoveries with teachers at other schools. At the beginning of the school year, as it became clear that the pandemic would not finish soon, the Ministry of Education organized refresher courses for school staff on how to organize remote education, and the Israeli education system successfully adapted to its demands. This happened because schools were given freedom to find solutions independently. Now, when the pandemic in Israel is almost over, many people discuss whether to give more freedom to teachers and school principals based on this experience.

I think it was very symbolic to finish the course with the lecture of Mr. Avi Issacharoff. He proved that crisis could be converted to opportunity, not only in business but also in one’s personal life. He faced many crises in his life, and he learned from these and adapted and enriched his life accordingly. He was shot by terrorist, and then, several years later, he happened to have an interview with a son of this same terrorist, who expressed his pride in his father. He has learned to look at every event in life from multiple perspectives. This approach was applied in the creation of TV show “Fauda”. If we acquire this skill of converting crisis to opportunity in our life, we also will succeed at applying it in business.

I think we learned a lot from the course; it was a great opportunity to listen to many experts from varied fields.

Photo by Hakan Nural