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High-Tech Wealth Buoys Israel
(Reuters) Lucas van Grinsven - After the success of Silicon Valley in the 1990s, few countries have managed to repeat the mix of education, innovation, and investment to create new wealth, and Israel is one of them, a new book argues. A country of just 6.8 million people, Israel has created billions of euros of wealth through new products and services, said Douglas Davis, who with his wife Helen wrote Israel in the World: Changing Lives Through Innovation. Israeli researchers in recent years have developed instant messaging on the Internet, wireless computing chips for Intel, miniature video camera capsules to examine internal organs, filters and tubes for veins to prevent heart attacks and strokes, security software, and new cancer treatments. High-tech exports from Israel amounted to $26 billion in 2000, 57% of total exports, up from 23% in the early 1990s. Risk capital available to new companies is the highest in the world, with a whopping 5% of gross domestic product devoted to research and development.