Israeli Shlomo Weinish, who gave a presentation at the  Limmud Conference here, began his session on the topic of Israeli innovations by asking “How is it that Israel—a country of 7.8 million people - less than 1/1000th of world population, only sixty four years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources—produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?”  (He was quoting from the book Start-Up Nation, The Story of Israel’s Economy by Dan Senor and Saul Singer 2009.

 What makes Israeli industries lead and set the pace of progress?, Weinish asked. It has to be something in their unique nature and purely Israeli ecosystem. Weinish, who agrees with  the theory put forth by Senor and Singer, explained that these unique factors factors are mandatory military service and immigration.

Service in the israeli Defence Forces  is  a factor in  explaining Israel's successful, because every young person comes away from their military service with built in skills and abilities necessary for innovation: knowing how to think outside of the box; as soldiers they have to think and act decisively on their feet in the moment; they do not have the luxury of going back to a board room to evaluate a decision or proposed solution.

Additionally, as Weinish explained, these same men and women who formed tight knit group dynamics in military service are able to do the same in the business, entrepreneurial and creative world,  drawing upon each other’s abilities already developed by military service. They have at a very formativeg age aquired the tools and skills necessary to achieve maximum potential and output, more than any other nation in the world.

The other main factor in Israel's success is  being a very young immigrant nation, according to Weinish. Immigrants left their countries of birth and came with their knowledge and experience combined with the great ability to overcome adversity; nine out of ten  Jewish Israelis today are immigrants or descendants of immigrant-including Holocaust survivors, Soviet Jews or Ethiopian Jews, all of whom  took many risks coming to Israel to start over.

Weinish talked about Soviet Jews who made aliya with suitcases of papers on which were written inventions, innovations, ideas,  and projects just waiting to be developed because in Russia they would never have the chance to develop these ideas.  When these Soviet Jews would see a problem as they walked in their own surroundings and interacted with they thought of solutions to problems they noticed – but not until they reached Israel would these fantastic ideas be able to come to fruition. Israel holds the world title for the number of patents per capita in the world.

Israel has the most Venture Capital Investments per capita in the world and the most companies on NASDAQ and leads in GDP growth rates. Because of Israel’s innovative success investors are drawn to what is sustainable.

Examples of Israeli innovations that we use daily and take for granted: Cell phones, computors, the DELL chip, the flash drive, baby monitors, electric cars, solar windows, 3 D Printers, Babylon computer software translation and dictionary, Cherry tomatoes, mobile cameras on cars, the pill camera used to diagnose intestinal disorders, artificial gills, the irrigation drip system, desalinization techniques, nanowire, DNA computing system. Military inventions include Uzi sub machine gun, Arrow anti-ballistic missile, sea skimming anti ship missile, unmanned air planes, the Iron Dome air defense system, wall radar and more....these are but a drop in the bucket.

In Israel the number of scientists and engineers is 27 per 1000 people and they have easy access to capital at their disposal for research and development amounting to 4.9% the gross domestic product. Israel ranks 17th as the most economically developed nation, and as well, 1st in the world as the most durable economy in this precarious economical time.