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Source: http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13216097&fsrc=rss
Land of Opportunity
[Economist-UK] Israel is home to 4,000 high-tech companies and more than 100 venture-capital funds. Innovations developed in the country include the Pentium chip (Intel), voicemail (Comverse), instant messaging (Mirabilis, Ubique), firewalls (Checkpoint) and the "video pill," which allows doctors to study your insides without the need for invasive surgery. Almost 70 Israeli companies are traded on NASDAQ. Israel has the world's highest ratio of PhDs per capita, the highest ratio of engineers and scientists and some of the world's best research universities. Israel's main qualification for entrepreneurialism is its status as an embattled Jewish state in a sea of Arab hostility. The Israeli army not only works hard to keep the country at the cutting edge of technology, it also trains young Israelis in the virtues of teamwork and improvisation. It is strikingly common for young Israelis to start businesses with friends that they met in the army. Add to that a high tolerance of risk, born of a long history and an ever-present danger of attack, and you have the makings of an entrepreneurial firecracker.