Mothers wanting their kidsto dropout and form start ups

Thomas Friedman had a very interesting column in the New York Times last Sunday, June 10, 2007 titled, "Israel Discovers Oil".

He was referring to a tour he made there recently to visit the high tech student start ups being supported by Israel's government, university and their aggressive culture of start up funding.

Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the article...

"Pointing to a room full of young Israeli high-tech college seniors, [his host] Mr. Bronicki remarked: "These are our oil wells."

"It was quite a scene. Once a year Ben Gurion students in biomedical
engineering, software, electrical engineering and computing create
elaborate displays of their senior projects or — as in the case of a
student-made robot that sidled up to me — demonstrate devices they've
invented."

"Today, every Israeli Jewish mother wants her son to be a dropout and go create a start-up," said [venture capitalist] Mr. Vardi, who is currently invested in 38 different ones."

"... when the world becomes this flat — with so many
distributed tools of innovation and connectivity empowering
individuals from anywhere to compete, connect and collaborate — the
most important competition is between you and your own imagination,
because energetic, innovative and connected individuals can now act on
their imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before."

"Those countries and companies that empower their individuals to
imagine and act quickly on their imagination are going to thrive. So
while there are reasons to be pessimistic about Israel these days,
there is one huge reason for optimism: this country has a culture that
nurtures and rewards individual imagination — one with no respect for
limits or hierarchies, or fear of failure. It's a perfect fit with
this era of globalization."

As Mr Friedman points out, "These are oil wells that don't run dry."

I can't post the entire article because it's copyrighted by the New York Times, but you can find other bloggers who have. You can also subscribe to the Times on line for $7.95 per month to get this and all the rest. I don't blame them, but I read mine at the library.