Good news for a change: Israel's high tech world

From Reuters, 2005_04_15 (excerpt):

High-tech wealth buoys Israel

After the success of Silicon Valley in the 1990s, few countries have managed to repeat the mix of education, innovation and investment to create new wealth, and Israel is one of them, a new book argues.

A country of just 6.8 million people best known for its conflict with the Palestinians, Israel has managed to create billions of euros of wealth through new products and services, said Douglas Davis on Monday, who with his wife Helen wrote "Israel in the World: Changing Lives Through Innovation".

Israeli researchers in recent years have developed instant messaging on the Internet, wireless computing chips for Intel, miniature video camera capsules to examine internal organs, filters and tubes for veins to prevent heart attacks and strokes, security software and new cancer treatments.

The book, to be launched in London this week, covers dozens of examples and explains the success by a potent mix of education and risk capital.

It may provide lessons to other nations looking to better cope with mass immigration and increased competition from lower wage countries -- Israel's population has grown ten-fold in less than six decades due to high birth rates and immigration.

High-tech exports from Israel amounted to $26 billion (14 billion pounds) in 2000, making up 57 percent of total exports, up from 23 percent in the early 1990s. Risk capital available to new companies is the highest in the world, with a whopping 5 percent of gross domestic product devoted to research and development.

Imagine the wealth Israel would have created for herself, for the neighbourhood and for the world, had she been left in peace to pursue science, technology, the arts...

Posted by Joseph Alexander Norland at April 15, 2005 09:18 AM