“We need low-cost monitoring technologies to track cognitive processes and capabilities at an individual level” — Danny Dankner, CEO and co-founder of Applied Cognitive Engineering

Ques­tion: Dan­ny, please share 1–2 major brain health needs you observe right now whose solu­tion demands a cre­ative and sig­nif­i­cant tech-enabled innovation.

Answer: We need low-cost mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies to track cog­ni­tive process­es and capa­bil­i­ties at an indi­vid­ual lev­el. This would be crit­i­cal to trace and diag­nose dete­ri­o­rat­ing process­es, espe­cial­ly among the “wor­ried well” and old­er adults.

What advice would you give an entre­pre­neur launch­ing an inno­va­tion to address that?

The same advice I’d give any entre­pre­neur: make sure you address a real need, be focused, short­en devel­op­ment cycles and work as close as pos­si­ble to prospec­tive cus­tomers. Of course you also need to assem­ble a group of capa­ble and con­nect­ed peo­ple which you are com­fort­able work­ing with.

Final­ly, please share some­thing excit­ing you’re work­ing on.

We have been devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tion sys­tems to train and improve on-field deci­sion-mak­ing per­for­mance  among com­pet­i­tive foot­ball (“soc­cer” in the US) play­ers, and it’s excit­ing to start to see tan­gi­ble results. For exam­ple, the Cologne Sport Uni­ver­si­ty just released this fas­ci­nat­ing study about the effi­ca­cy of the Foot­ball Intel­li­Gym, led by Prof. Daniel Memmert–the head of the sports cog­ni­tion depart­ment there.

– Dan­ny Dankn­er, a ser­i­al entre­pre­neur, is the CEO and co-founder of Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing Ltd (ACE), a leader in the field of cog­ni­tive train­ing for com­pet­i­tive ath­letes. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was on the found­ing team of Kinet­i­ca Inter­net­ting Solu­tions, and led strate­gic ini­tia­tives at Mobile­S­pear and Scepia Inter­net Solu­tions. Dan­ny is a found­ing mem­ber of Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty’s entre­pre­neur­ship forum and serves as board mem­ber of the Glob­al Entre­pre­neur­ship Net­work Israel. He will serve as a Judge in the first Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test host­ed by the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th, 2017).