The startup nation

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The startup nation
Dan Senor & Saul Singer


By isolating Israel, Agassi told us with an impish smile, Israel’s adversaries had actually created the perfect laboratory to test ideas. 

in addition to boasting the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850 start-ups, one for every 1,844 Israelis),6 more Israeli companies are listed on the NASDAQ exchange than all companies from the entire European continent

adversity, like necessity, breeds inventiveness

Israeli culture and regulations reflect a unique attitude to failure, one that has managed to repeatedly bring failed entrepreneurs back into the system to constructively use their experience to try again, rather than leave them permanently stigmatized and marginalized. 

The Israelis were making the twenty-hour trip between Tel Aviv and California so frequently that they seemed omnipresent, always ready to corner an executive in the hallway or even a restroom—anything to argue their case.

The others are always making a pitch for their specific company. The Israelis are always making a pitch for Israel.

the nation’s equivalent of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are the IDF’s elite units. The unit in which an applicant served tells prospective employers what kind of selection process he or she navigated, and what skills and relevant experience he or she may already possess.

“In Israel, one’s academic past is somehow less important than the military past. One of the questions asked in every job interview is, Where did you serve in the army?”

Collins describes Israel’s core purpose as “to provide a secure place on Earth for the Jewish people.” Building Israel’s economy and participating in its cluster—which are interchangeable—and pitching it to the most far-flung places in the world are what in part motivates Israel’s “profitable patriots.”

The United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report, which presented the organization’s research from 2002 through 2005, found that the number of books translated annually into Arabic in all Arab countries combined was one-fifth the number translated into Greek in Greece. The number of patents registered between 1980 and 2000 from Saudi Arabia was 171; from Egypt, 77; from Kuwait, 52; from the United Arab Emirates, 32; from Syria, 20; and from Jordan, 15—compared with 7,652 from Israel. The Arab world has the highest illiteracy rates globally and one of the lowest numbers of active research scientists with frequently cited articles. In 2003, China published a list of the five hundred best universities in the world; it did not include a single mention of the more than two hundred universities in the Arab world.

[About the new modern universities opening across the gulf and ME] “It has been more about bringing education brands to the gulf than immigrating and assimilating brains,” Chris Davidson told us. “These universities are focused on national reputation building, not real innovation"

The most careful thing is to dare. —SHIMON PERES 

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