Innovation Lessons in "Start-Up Nation" - O'Reilly Radar: "# A loyalty to the entire community that goes beyond personal success. The authors point out that, for all of Israelis' notorious fractiousness, they expend enormous effort helping total strangers. All of Israel is a single team, even a single family. (Obviously, this family feeling does not extend to non-Jews.) Israeli entrepreneurs who give talks abroad often play up the strengths of their country as well as their company.
# A sense of dissatisfaction. To innovate, one must be convinced that things are not good enough the way they are now. For Israelis, this drive for change has both Biblical and more recent historical roots, but technology provides a new arena rewarding hopes for improvement.
# A Do-It-Yourself approach to technology, which perhaps is one manifestation of the afore-mentioned innate dissatisfaction. The authors report that equipment purchased by the army is always being tinkered with. The same interest in taking things apart and jerry-rigging them extends throughout the culture.
# A culture of challenging authority. The authors point out that this is a deep cultural value (and like many before them, trace it partly to the Jewish intellectual tradition), one that is particularly hard to foster in countries with controlling regimes.
# A determination to succeed against all odds. Countries that get complacent and rest on their laurels--as most observers think North Americans are doing--eventually lose their privileged places. The authors highlight fascinating stories of Israelis keeping up production in the face of war, and of cheerfully taking on seemingly impossible challenges.
# Interdisciplinary agility. Israelis tend to learn many skills--partly to survive in the armed forces--and to form companies closely linking people with different areas of expertise. In an age where many challenges require mashups between disciplines, this imparts a strong advantage.
# A tolerance for failure. Like the Silicon Valley, Israel is a place where someone can start a company, manage it through bankruptcy, and then pick up to start another company. A single failure, the authors say, gives the entrepreneur a high chance of succeeding at the next venture. Even in the military, people are rewarded for tackling problems with creative intelligence--not so much for the ultimate success or failure of the attempt.
# Providing young people with arenas to exert responsibility. In Israel, of course, this arena is its unusually unhierarchical armed forces (and people who don't do army service, such as Arabs and the ultra-orthodox, miss out on critical experiences). But other countries could find other ways to challenge youth in situations where taking charge is a must and where results really matter.
# A fruitful mentoring relationship between venture capitalists and new entrepreneurs. Injecting money into new ventures (as so many countries do) is not enough; the managers must be guided through the shoals of financial, technical, and human resource challenges. Israel set up a unique program called Yozma in 1993 to bring together all the necessary elements.
# Government policies friendly to startups. Israel has a decidedly mixed history here. Even after making a historic turn away from government control and toward a free market, its environment is most helpful to computer and high-tech companies. There are certainly innovations in many other areas--notably agriculture--but the authors say these fields encounter hampering regulations.
# A truly open-arms approach to immigrants, who bring not only fresh perspectives but a high tolerance for risk. Once again, of course, Israel's liberal attitude toward immigrants applies only to Jews (and a lot of haggling goes on around deciding who qualifies). Even for Jews, it can take a long time to assimilate waves of newcomers and turn them into productive employees. But countries that don't make it easy to set down roots suffer economically. Short-term foreign workers never form the sustainable innovative institutions that can be planted by truly committed immigrants."
