Professor Dr Marc Gruber is a world-leading authority in the domain of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. He heads the Chair of Entrepreneurship & Technology Commercialization at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) in Switzerland, the worldwide #1 university among all universities established in the last 50 years, and works as an Associate Editor for the #1 empirical research journal in management, the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ). He received multiple “Thought Leader” awards for his breakthrough research. Marc is actively engaged in teaching, consulting, and executive training programs in Europe, the US and Asia, and regularly acts as a jury member in start-up and corporate entrepreneurship competitions across Europe.

Dr Sharon Tal is a co- founder and former executive director of the Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a well-recognized lecturer on marketing for high-tech startups. She gives lectures and workshops on a regular basis to students, and to start-ups in accelerators around her home-country (Israel), and serves a mentor in many organizations that aim to help budding entrepreneurs. She has vast experience in marketing, as she served as a marketing manager for firms in several industries, as well as extensive experience in strategic consulting. In her PhD research, Sharon analyzed the market entry decision of hundreds of startups and its consequences on firm performance and flexibility.