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Israel: Punching Above Its Weight. The Secret of Israel's Tech Success
(Economist-UK) Israel is third only to America and Canada in the number of companies listed on NASDAQ, and the country attracts twice the number of venture-capital (VC) investments as the whole of Europe. In 2003, 55% of Israel's exports were high technology, compared with the OECD average of 26%. Tech giants such as IBM, Motorola, and Cisco have research centers in Israel, which is also where Intel developed its Centrino chip. The pump was primed by government grants in the 1970s, by the BIRD Foundation (a joint American-Israeli initiative that supported many start-ups before VC money was widely available), and by government schemes to encourage Russian immigrants who arrived after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another big factor is the army, that gets hold of everybody at age 18, and if they have a glimmer of potential, it catalyzes their transformation into engineers or scientists. Israel has 135 engineers per 10,000 employees, compared with 70 in America, 65 in Japan, and 28 in Britain.