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Israel Research Center

Accelerating Inbound Innovation

June 3, 2025

Co-Creating Valued Innovation

The Israel Research Center (IRC)’s mission is to accelerate the identification and adoption of disruptive external technologies in NEC’s business. Using NEC’s own research results, ad-hoc new research, and rapid prototyping, IRC works closely with the Business Units in Japan and globally to that goal.

The 21st Century tech advances are much faster: disruptions such as GenAI have propagated globally in just a few years. Rapid execution, not some “core scientific discovery,” lie at the heart of the largest and fastest growing global companies. If one relies just on internal inventions, global impact is impossible.

The challenge is to be able to pick and take a chance on new technologies before they become stable, well known, and obvious – since that creates no differentiation. If we will wait until everything is understood and explained, tested, and validated – it will be late to market. At the same time, we cannot afford to introduce to the market immature products.

IRC is an applied research lab, our researchers are called” Innovation Coaches” because that is their main task – to “coach” the startups and the technologies, building upon new technologies and creating novel applications.

Coaching takes many different forms:

  • Helping the startup create a logical value story that NEC Business Units can relate to.
  • Validating the core technologies and claims of the startup.
  • Identifying potential practical connections to NEC’s current and future business.
  • Bridging the gap – often the external tech is not enough. NEC needs to develop complementary capabilities to make it into a useful product for our customers.
  • Real customer validation by doing fast low-cost proofs of concept – typically in Israel.

Area of Focus: AI Cyber Defense

The cyber security landscape is trending towards the increasing sophistication of AI-powered attacks and defenses, the broader adoption of Zero Trust security models, and the strengthening of privacy protection regulations. The acceleration of remote work and digital transformation continues to underscore the critical importance of cyber security measures for organizations. Israel is actively focusing on the development of cutting-edge cyber security technologies and talent to address these future trends, reinforcing its role as a global innovation hub.
IRC’s role is first to map the complex terrain of cyber solutions – a typical cyber product is very hard to understand from documents and continues to evolve on a quarterly basis. These products all have weaknesses, and the interaction between products of different companies is very hard to predict.
IRC is working closely with “NEC Security” and other units in NEC to study, evaluate, and test in semi-live environments the function and operation of these products.

Additionally, IRC's Innovation Coaches are enhancing the research and development of Gen-AI security technologies based on customers' requirements. IRC is collaborating closely with Business Units and research labs in Japan to ensure rapid validation and commercialization of these technologies.