The StartUpNation presentation opened my eyes – The Youth of Israel  are  aiming at success like the older generation of the Western World – only that they have now skills of HighTech to their advantage.

I wrote about StartUpNation and then went to listen on Monday November 11, 2009 to the presentation at the 92nd Street Y.

The event was in the Buttenwieser room on the 2nd floor at the Y, as in the main hall there was an event with Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. The smaller room was packed and clearly with many people that wanted to find out the shortcut to becoming rich.

The StartUpNation program was introduced by Yair Shiran, the Economic Minister to North America of the Government of Israel, and it included Mr. Dan Senior one of the book’s authors, Jonathan Medved a technology entrepreneur, and a further financial services entrepreneur. All presenters were extremely happy to tell this tremendous success story – how little Israel became second only to the US in Nasdaq listings, and when considering the differences in size between the two countries – it is obvious that Israel is the World HighTach leader. Whatever you take in your hand today – your cell phone your laptop, or your medication – it all has in it Israel’s inventions or production.

To explain what I meant in my title of this second article – please think of it how Israel went first for the old style economy – for agriculture and manufacture – like in the US. But then thanks to a younger generation that had technology training in the army, it moved first to higher quality products but then eventually to hightech, and never looked back. One of the speakers said that first the chip made by Intel in Israel, but Instant Message was created later also in Israel. Israel, without resources or cheap labor,  can compete on “talent” based industries.

Then I heard something about business patriotism – the feeling you have that you carry the country’s economy on your shoulders.

I heard about such things as drip irrigation and water saving technologies, about desalination, geothermal as developed by Yehuda Bronitzzki and Ormat, the various solar energy technologies, and now the solar thermal and the Solel company, about wave power – a plant being built by Israelis in China. The book itself opens with President Shimon Peress trying to get America’s three automotive manufacturers interested in Shai Agassi’s concept of “Better World” but to their peril they did not show up to learn about electric cars.

It really is all true and Israel has a tremendous potential here – so much that Sunday, November 8th, 2009 Fareed Zacharia on CNN displayed the just released book and said that this should be read by all Arab leaders – this to understand how much better off they could be by working with Israel for their own gain. Having leafed by now through the book and read parts of it – I vouch also that the Arabs would do well listening to Fareed.

But why am I not completely happy now in this respect I must say that I realized how far this young generation has moved at making large sums of money – but is rather weak in what was called “business patriotism.”

I sent a question to the panel that said in light of the technology advance in energy that they have achieved, and in light of the national importance to Israel of the World using less oil, this as a security issue for Israel, would they consider make some know-how available to the world without having patented it? That is without making direct profit from it, but just the profit to the Nation in terms of security from oil money funded warfare?

The answer was an unexpected lightning boom from Jonathan Medved – NO!

OK, what I saw was the ideal of making money, but little real interest to stop and think it through – what is actually most needed by the nation. So, these young people, as bright as they are, they did not display political savvy – only old  capitalist ideals of making money. Having the right training they are very good at what they are doing, and much of the audience came to pick up ips of what IPO to buy that will make them ride along this Israeli wave.

This is all fine with me – but I really want more – and will Mr. Shiran stop for a moment and try to start an effort to multiply the World’s benefits from this Israeli technology development sparks?

The first article was :

Still StartUpNation? When it comes to innovation – how is it that Israel has more listings on the tech-oriented NASDAQ stock exchange than all of Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, and China combined? What can this mean for a Green Economy?