How Berlin is mapping a course for innovation

Source: Cities Today Published: July 8, 2020

Andrea Rosen moved to Berlin from Tel Aviv at the end of 2016 to work with a small company in the city’s burgeoning start-up sector.

Her decision to leave one of the world’s most vibrant start-up ecosystems to uproot to the German capital says much about the growing potential of Berlin as an international hub for new companies.

“I fell in love with the blank canvas that was Berlin,” she says. “[Berlin] wasn’t ahead of Tel Aviv’s start-up scene in terms of the technology of the ecosystem but I found this romance about it. Berlin was at the beginning of a start-up explosion and there was a lot of support to allow you to do different things.”

Rosen is now the Smart City Lead for Infarm, a German company founded by Israelis that grows produce inside supermarkets. She soon found a myriad of other urban tech start-ups and saw an ecosystem that was organically growing in Berlin.