Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Monday, January 20, 2003Tony Perkins' latest The Angler column is titled, "Life on the Israeli front lines." [1] In it, Perkins quotes Jonathan Medved of Israel Seed Partners:
Why is Israel so hot? "Technology and entrepreneurship are about courage and fostering a change-the-world culture," explained Jonathan. "Silicon Valley was built not on natural resources, but on human resources. Israeli entrepreneurs are simply better trained and equipped to navigate their businesses during difficult times." He also pointed out that in the post-bubble era, entrepreneurs have to make a lot of a little. "We have a national predisposition to capital efficiency, " Jonathan observed. "It is also a given for an Israeli entrepreneur that you have to go global and sell your product in faraway places to be successful, which is good training in times when you have to strain a little harder to find revenue."
In other words, an influx of talent added to a challenging business environment yields entrepreneurs who are particularly adept at leveraged growth. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but Israel seems like an extreme version of my corner of the economic frontier. I wonder how extreme conditions have to be in order to turn disadvantage into advantage. Is it possible that conditions here in Big Sky Country are difficult enough to be disadvantageous on the one hand, but too cushy to force adaptive change on the other?
[1] Red Herring, February 2003, p. 14.
