the
innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.
Vol.
9, No. 12 - December 2009
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Giving Innovation a Fighting Chance
By Jeff Govendo
In
keeping with the season, here's a story about innovation from the
Holy Land.
An
article appearing in a recent issue of Newsweek by Dan Senor and Saul
Singer chronicles the amazing success small Israeli companies have
had in developing and commercializing new technologies over the years.
Whether in biotech, information systems, alternative energy or other
cutting edge enterprises, Israel far outstrips much larger, wealthier
countries in bringing new ideas to market. It attracts, for example,
30 times as much venture capital as Europe and twice that of the U.S.
on a per capita basis. There are more Israeli companies listed on
NASDAQ than the combined total from Japan, Canada, China, India and
South Korea.
To
what do the authors attribute Israel's incredible record of achievement?
Its military, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF.
As
you probably know, all Israeli men and women are required to serve
in the military, usually right after high school. This means, for
one thing, that those who attend college (some 45%) arrive as older
and more mature freshmen, having had real world experience unmatched
by those in other societies.
In
addition, the military culture itself contributes to their bent for
entrepreneurship. Unlike forces in larger nations, the IDF is
relatively "flat" in terms of management hierarchy. It is
designed for speed and flexibility -- rather than structure and order
-- affording each recruit the freedom to improvise to a degree that
would be unheard of (and probably unmanageable) in much larger forces.
In addition, soldiers are trained to be generalists, able to execute
in a number of specialty areas, rather than narrowly focus on only
one. This puts a great deal of knowledge and perspective in the
hands of each individual, which they carry with them to the private
sector and combine with others. It may sound like a recipe for
chaos, but united in purpose, it's ideal for dynamic entrepreneurship.
Last
but not least is the relative ease of transferring successful military
technology to the civilian sector. The IDF doesn't so jealously guard
its secrets that they can't be applied elsewhere. Doing what innovative
people do, Israel's entrepreneurs have drawn from successful military
applications to come up with new products for commercialization. The
PillCam, for instance, is a nanocamera that can beam out pictures
from inside the body, precluding the need for invasive surgery. Its
progenitor was the miniaturized sensing systems embedded in the noses
of Israeli aircraft. In another example, mathematical algorithms used
to sift through mountains of intelligence data on terrorists was successfully
applied to gene sequencing, a decade before the mapping of the human
genome.
These
examples and others underscore that all innovation, as original as
it may seem, is sprung from the knowledge and experience people have
gained elsewhere and put together in new contexts. That the IDF provides
a fertile backdrop for this explains only part of Israel's success.
The rest is the new contexts. If all those soldiers turning to
the private sector were to find themselves in cultural environments
that do not recognize nor actively welcome the wealth of ideas and
know-how they've accumulated in their young lives, Israel's business
and innovation profile would look decidedly different. More like
that of the many nations around the world with sophisticated militaries
alongside perenially struggling economies.
The
lesson for U.S. companies interested in fostering more innovation
(no, it's not to lobby for a more Israeli-like military) is to take
a look at how they can more actively draw upon the rich experience
and different perspectives of their own people. While their employees
may not have the unique background of serving in the IDF, they do
have unique backgrounds -- with a wide range of knowledge and experience
that can be brought to bear against the many challenges businesses
face. But this can only happen if leaders see the value of differing
perspectives and actively encourage the participation of their people
-- all their people -- in the innovation process.
Even
without the military background, this gives innovation a fighting
chance.
