Start-up Nation

AUTHORS’ NOTE

This is a book about innovation and entrepreneurship, and how one small country, Israel, came to embody both.

This is not a book about technology, even though we feature many high-tech companies. While we are fascinated by technology and its impact on the modern age, our focus is the ecosystem that generates radically new business ideas.

This book is part exploration, part argument, and part storytelling. The reader might expect the book to be organized chronologically, around companies, or according to the various key elements that we have identified in Israel’s model for innovation. These organizational blueprints tempted us, but we ultimately rejected them all in favor of a more mosaiclike approach.

We examine history and culture, and use selected stories of companies to try to understand where all of this creative energy came from and the forms in which it is expressed. We have interviewed economists and studied their perspectives, but we come at our subject as students of history, business, and geopolitics. One of us (Dan) has a background in business and government, the other (Saul) in government and journalism. Dan lives in New York and has studied in Israel and lived, worked, and traveled in the Arab world; Saul grew up in the United States and now lives in Jerusalem.

Dan has invested in Israeli companies. None of these companies are profiled in this book, but some people Dan has invested with are. We will note this where appropriate.

While our admiration for the untold story of what Israel has accomplished economically was a big part of what motivated us to write this book, we do cover areas where Israel has fallen behind. We also examine threats to Israel’s continued success—most of which will likely surprise the reader, since they do not relate to those that generally preoccupy the international press.

We delve briefly into two other areas: why American innovation industries have not taken better advantage of the entrepreneurial talent offered by those with U.S. military training and experience, in contrast to the practice in the Israeli economy; and why the Arab world is having difficulty in fostering entrepreneurship. These subjects deserve in-depth treatment beyond the scope of this book; entire books could be written about each.

Finally, if there is one story that has been largely missed despite the extensive media coverage of Israel, it is that key economic metrics demonstrate that Israel represents the greatest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world today.

This book is our attempt to explain that phenomenon.