Israel’s competitive advantage is not technology, it is creativity

 

   Dr. Reuven Reuveni - IsraelFebruary 15, 2014

 

 

Based on Global Innovation Ranking derived from WEF (World Economic Forum)  Executive Opinion survey, Israel is located in the honorable place – 6 among 139 countries, as has recently published in the prestigious Financial Times magazine

 The Israel’s high-tech industry today, is the sector accounts for more than 40 per cent of

national exports. Only the US attracts more venture capital funding than Israel.

This industry has transformed the national economy as well as the entire Israeli society via creating new wealth, a new class of entrepreneurs and a new role model for the young.

 “For thousands of years, a Jewish mother wanted her son to become a doctor,” says Yossi Vardi, the man who founded the country’s first software company in 1969 and is considered as the Israel’s original high-tech pioneer. “Now, in Israel, she wants him to become the founder of a start-up.”

Haim Shani, the director-general at the ministry of finance says it is of “extreme strategic importance to the economy” . It is certainly due to 11 per cent to 15 per cent of national output and 14 per cent of the private sector labor force. Less tangible but no less important, it is also a source of considerable international prestige: at a time when Israel often finds itself isolated on the diplomatic front, the high-tech sector stands out as a universally admired national asset.

Israel today consistently finds itself at the top, or very near the top, of rankings measuring the number of start-ups, patents, venture capital investment and technology listings. During the last 15 years, the country has rebranded itself, in the title of a recent bestseller, as the “start-up nation” – cranking out ideas, patents, products and companies at a blistering pace. Only Taiwan, Japan and the US register more patents per head than Israel.

Analysts agree that many of the ingredients for the high-tech revolution were in place well before the first venture capital fund appeared in the early 1990s. The country had, for example, long boasted a highly educated population as well as strong universities and research institutions.

Certainly these were the main power to push Israel firmly towards creating a “knowledge economy” long before the term existed.

In spite of the recent concern over European and American sovereign debt may yet there are signs of improvement though.  Recent data published by the Israel Venture Capital Research Center show the country’s high-tech sector raised more than $1bn in capital in the first half of the year, an increase of 82 per cent compared with the same period in 2010. The number of companies obtaining funds was the highest in at least five years.

And more importantly, the sector is once again managing to secure profitable exits: MediaMind, the Israeli digital advertising company, was bought by a US rival for $517m in June. Last month, Dotomi, another Israeli advertising business, was snapped up by another American group for $275m. Deals such as these should go at least some way towards assuaging investor concern – and help persuade them to keep on funding.

Moreover,  there is no sign that the homegrown high-tech industry is missing any boats – as recent deals show that groups such as Facebook (which this year acquired its first Israeli company) have as much interest in the country’s start-ups today as Intel and Cisco did more than a decade ago, when the first wave of Israeli start-ups was snapped up. As Mr. Shani confidently summarized that “the world will still need solutions that Israel can provide.”

In summary, Erel Margalit, who now serves as chairman of a $900m fund and a well-known advocate of Israel’s high-tech industry, indicates that Israel's high-tech boom was always based on more than clever algorithms and nifty chip design.

 “People misread Israel’s competitive advantage,” he says. “Israel’s competitive advantage is not technology, it is creativity

Based on article entitled:   Israel: Invention tension

By Tobias Buck, published in Financial Times magazine

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/255eed8a-d2ea-11e0-9aae-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1WzOWWaZD





 

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank - On the same wards, in the same operating theatres

 

 

   Dr. Reuven Reuveni - IsraelFebruary 15, 2014

 

 

 

This article is dedicated to all students and their professors in the world

 

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others.

This is a MUST READ article that needs to be disseminated in every and each university. If you have friends, children or grandchildren in university please make sure they publish this important letter in the students' rag or post it on the university bulletin board.

An incredible letter written by a non - Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel.

A Scottish professor responds to campus boycott. The Edinburgh Student's Association made a motion to boycott all things Israeli since they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime. Dr. Denis Maceoin (a non-Jew) is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs. Here is his letter to those students.

 AN EDUCATED NON-JEWISH TAKE ON ISRAEL.

Denis MacEoin has been editor of the Middle East Quarterly since June 2009

 

Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, addresses The Committee of the Edinburgh University Student Association.

Received by e-mail from the author, Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly,

TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

 

 May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain's great Middle East experts in their day.

I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

.It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza or elsewhere 

 Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population, an exact echo of their percentage in the general population. In Iran, the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa.

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on 

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence. It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely

Denis MacEoin

http://www.meforum.org/staff/Denis+MacEoin

http://www.facebook.com/notes/arnie-taragin/finally-an-incredible-letter-written-by-a-non-jewish-scottish-professor-to-his-s/10150297015783610