The Spirit of Entrepreneurship: Developing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Humanities
In recent years, the Faculty of Humanities launched a program focused on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, supported by the Rothschild Foundation (Yad Hanadiv) in collaboration with ASPER-HUJI Innovate, Hebrew University’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The initiative is led by Prof. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal from the Faculty of Humanities and Sharon Levite-Vaknin from the Innovation Center, in coordination with Faculty Dean Prof. Nissim Otmazgin.
The program seeks to build a collaborative innovation community connecting humanities scholars with industry, train and equip students and researchers with entrepreneurial skills, develop practical, research-driven products grounded in the humanities, and support ventures with a business-oriented focus.
At the same time, it lays a broad foundation for fostering an entrepreneurial culture in the humanities and aims to cultivate a new generation of scholars who view entrepreneurship as a central value in both research and teaching.
The program offers a dual benefit by integrating academic inquiry with practical application. On the research side, entrepreneurial and innovative thinking enriches intellectual engagement and opens new avenues for innovation. On the practical side, a product-oriented mindset amplifies the impact of the humanities in cultural and industry contexts, while expanding employment opportunities for graduates of the humanities.
The program offers both introductory and advanced courses focused on entrepreneurial skill-building, the creation of a database of existing ventures and products, and the development of applied academic courses in collaboration with industry partners and organizations.
These initiatives will be supported by the establishment of an entrepreneurial community—a Humanities Entrepreneurship Club—bringing together academic and administrative staff, alumni, entrepreneurs, students, and graduate researchers. The club will be part of the university-wide entrepreneurship network, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration around innovation and entrepreneurship, and gaining exposure to activities promoted by the university’s innovation center through diverse and direct channels. In the future, the club will expand to include members from beyond the traditional boundaries of the humanities.
The Humanities Entrepreneurship Club will host a series of large-scale annual events, recruit mentors and relevant lecturers, establish a joint think tank with the university’s Innovation Center, and support humanities-based ventures through the center’s annual accelerator program. Two selected projects will also receive funding to develop a POC (Proof of Concept).
With this initiative, the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University has joined a distinguished group of leading institutions offering innovation and entrepreneurship programs in the humanities, including the University of Oxford, Stanford University, UCLA, Brandeis University, and the European Union’s Center for Innovation in the Humanities and the Arts.
How do you turn the humanities into action? Hear Prof. Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal in conversation with Goel Pinto on Gam Ken Tarbut, as he discusses the program and the inspiration behind it.