Start-up Nation Read Online Free

entrepreneurial economies in the world?
    The fact that this question has been treated only in piecemeal fashion is unbelievable to Israeli political economist Gidi
     Grinstein: “Look, we doubled our economic situation relative to America while multiplying our population fivefold and fighting
     three wars. This is totally unmatched in the economic history of the world.” And, he told us, the Israeli entrepreneur continues
     to perform in unimaginable ways. 12
    While the Holy Land has for centuries attracted pilgrims, lately it has been flooded by seekers of a different sort. Google’s CEO and chairman, Eric Schmidt, told us that the United States is the number one place in the world for entrepreneurs, but “after
     the U.S., Israel is the best.” Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has called Microsoft “an Israeli company as much as an American company”
     because of the size and centrality of its Israeli teams. 13 Warren Buffett, the apostle of risk aversion, broke his decades-long record of not buying any foreign company with the purchase
     of an Israeli company—for $4.5 billion—just as Israel began to fight the 2006 Lebanon war.
    It is impossible for major technology companies to ignore Israel, and most haven’t; almost half of the world’s top technology
     companies have bought start-ups or opened research and development centers in Israel. Cisco alone has acquired nine Israeli
     companies and is looking to buy more. 14
    “In two days in Israel, I saw more opportunities than in a year in the rest of the world,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president
     of Philips Medical. 15 Gary Shainberg, British Telecom’s VP for technology and innovation, told us, “There are more new innovative ideas, as opposed
     to recycled ideas—or old ideas repackaged in a new box—coming out of Israel than there are out in [Silicon] Valley now. And
     it doesn’t slow during global economic downturns.” 16
    Though Israel’s technology story is becoming more widely known, those exposed to it for the first time are invariably baffled.
     As an NBC Universal vice president sent to scout for Israeli digital media companies wondered, “Why is all this happening
     in Israel? I’ve never seen so much chaos and so much innovation all in one tiny place.” 17
    That is the mystery this book aims to solve. Why Israel and not elsewhere?
    One explanation is that adversity, like necessity, breeds inventiveness. Other small and threatened countries, such as South
     Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, can also boast growth records that are as impressive as Israel’s. But none of them have produced
     an entrepreneurial culture—not to mention an array of start-ups—that compares with Israel’s.
    Some people conjecture that there is something specifically Jewish at work. The notion that Jews are “smart” has become deeply
     embedded in the Western psyche. We saw this ourselves; when we told people we were writing a book about why Israel is so innovative,
     many reacted by saying, “It’s simple—Jews are smart, so it’s no surprise that Israel is innovative.” But pinning Israel’s
     success on a stereotype obscures more than it reveals.
    For starters, the idea of a unitary Jewishness—whether genetic or cultural—would seem to have little applicability to a nation
     that, though small, is among the most heterogeneous in the world. Israel’s tiny population is made up of some seventy different
     nationalities. A Jewish refugee from Iraq and one from Poland or Ethiopia did not share a language, education, culture, or
     history—at least not for the two previous millennia. As Irish economist David McWilliams explains, “Israel is quite the opposite
     of a uni-dimensional, Jewish country. . . . It is a monotheistic melting pot of a diaspora that brought back with it the culture,
     language and customs of the four corners of the earth.” 18
    While a common prayer book and a shared legacy of persecution count for something, it was far from