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Have you read Startup Nation?(1) It talks about why Israel is the country with the most startups per capita in the world. Israel also has the more companies on

Have you read Startup Nation?(1) It talks about why Israel is the country with the most startups per capita in the world. Israel also has the more companies on NASDAQ than all of Europe combined. One of the main reasons the authors cite is Israeli teenagers all go to the army. The entire Israeli military culture is based on individual resourcefulness and improvisation. They get experience in leadership and technical skills that almost no American teenager gets at their age. Further, instead of being saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for this training they come away with no debt. tl;dr I think the Israeli army if anything is a massive contribution to the success of their innovation economy. (1) http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/044654146X http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Mirac...

nivertech 16y ago
It's debatable. "Startup Nation" is an excellent PR book, but nothing more. For the real state of affair read "Hummus Manifesto" [1]. The fact is, that Jewish peers outside Israel has more success, than in Israel. It can easily be explained by the fact that they didn't wasted 3 most productive years of their lives to the army service. The Jewish population in Israel is more a less of the same size as Jewish population in US. Yet Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg were generated not in Israel, but in US. If their families had immigrated to Israel and they had spent 3 years in the IDF, I doubt Google and Facebook existed today. [1] http://sixkidsandafulltimejob.blogspot.com/2010/07/hummus-manifesto-part-1.html http://sixkidsandafulltimejob.blogspot.com/2010/07/hummus-ma...