Last week, I considered how Israel’s high-tech economy is able to create growth companies out of start-ups. The key is not to lose the emphasis on innovation and the innate drive for technological change.

Shortly after I completed that posting, I was faced with an article, which outlined London’s pathetic path towards creating an eco-system, enriched by innovation and change.

Strange, I thought. London has a captive audience of 8.5million residents, slightly larger than the populace of all of Israel. Resplendent in culture and history, it hosts some of the globe’s leading universities. Its financial heartland can support millions of start-ups. And yet, ….

And yet, when it comes to innovation, London loops in behind Israel, fifty percent of which is arid land. Further, Israel has two sub-populations, Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews, known for their large families and poverty. It is a country surrounded (literally) by geopolitical threats to its existence. The government budget is defense-spending centric.

Given these restrictions, what is it that has allowed (or demanded from) Israel to jump on the start-up bandwagon decades ago and never get off to this day?

There is a quotation attributed to David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first and legendary Prime Minister. “Nothing is impossible until it has been accomplished”. Cute, but why the need to push the impossible and so relentlessly?

For me, the underlying theme is the country has to keep proving that it is one step ahead. Unfortunately, the day that the Israel declared independence in May 1948, it was invaded. That threat has yet to be removed. Add in to the mix the fact that allies have rarely actually fought on behalf of Israel, then the citizens come to realise that they need to find a way to make things succeed for themselves.

It is this desire for self-reliance that has created a high-tech culture in Israel, which has been difficult to match, even from places like London with its near unlimited resources.