Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Israel

(3 Credits)

The course explores the origins for the emerging of a vibrant technological entrepreneurial ecosystem in Israel. The course adopts five type of lenses to explain the remarkable burst in Hi-Tech startups in Israel during the last 25 years. These five lenses are: 1) The availability of suitable factors of production through the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli Academia and immigration; 2) The emergence of related and supporting industries often located in designated geographical clusters; 3) Adverse local demand conditions; 4) Specific strategies, structures and corporate cultures; and 5) the role of the Israeli government in seeding the conditions for the emergence of complementary financial sources, as well as creating supportive tax and intellectual property rights systems. The course will go on to explore recent trends in the development of the Israeli Hi-tech industry, highlight possible constraints for its continued growth. Finally, the course draws wider conclusions as to the required conditions for seeding and nurturing similar technological entrepreneurial ecosystems in other countries around the world.