A High-tech Laboratory Called Israel
The Holy Land is nurturing a range of innovative, young companies. Its policies are now paying dividends in telecommunications, computers and software.
Quick! After the United States, which country is currently registering the largest number of new high-tech companies? Great Britain? France? Japan? Germany? Wrong! It’s Israel—and that’s in terms of actual numbers, not as a proportion of the country’s population. Although only half the size of Switzerland, Israel boasts over 3,000 high-tech companies, four-fifths of which are less than ten years old. What’s the secret?
"Our country is one big laboratory," says Azriel Hemar, Deputy Chief Scientist and Director of International Relations and Cooperation at Israel’s Department of Industry and Economics. With immigrants from 140 nations and neighboring Arab countries that are not always friendly, Israel has become a laboratory for cultural tolerance, integration and the rocky road to lasting peace. In the 1990s alone, over 800,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, pushing the country’s population past the five million mark. Nowadays, signposts, newspapers and television programs are not only in Hebrew, Arabic and English, but also in Russian. Some 10 % of the new immigrants are scientists who have received an outstanding education and this has given a huge boost to the Israeli economy.
Source: Seimens Press
