What Economic Collapse?

Thankfully, here in Israel many have thrived during the global collapse—thanks to an entrepreneurial culture.

There never seems to be a day go by without reports of new products, new start ups, new investment. Sure the traditional companies have tightened there belts, unemployment is higher than a year ago but even here there are significant signs that the percentage of unemployed is going down.

For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention:

a) the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today.

b) multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, 80 times greater than in China, and 350 times greater than in India.

c) Israel still boasts the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850 start-ups, one for every 1,844 Israelis).

d) more Israeli companies are on NASDAQ than companies from all of Europe, China, India, Korea, and Japan combined.

For a full report on the economic success, it is worth reading the analysis at http://tinyurl.com/yh8z5f4