Study sheds new light on Israeli high-tech landscape

Friday, June 28, 2002 | by

BUZZY GORDON

JERUSALEM—An award-winning research paper on Israel's high-tech economy, written by former San Franciscan Susanna Khavul, provides illuminating insights into the financial health of Israel's struggling companies.

"Money and Knowledge: Sources of Seed Capital and the Performance of High-Technology Start-ups," was published by the London Business School, where Khavul teaches. The report won the Academy of Management's 2001 Heizer Award for Outstanding Research in the field of New Enterprise Development. Earlier this month, it also received the Taylor & Francis Publishers Award for excellence in research on venture capital.

Khavul's key finding states that "it is clear that if they are to survive, high-technology startups must speed ideas into products and products to markets. The right mix of investors does matter in the start-up phase of a high technology new venture."

Turning to other questions in an e-mail to the Bulletin, she responds, "I think there is an obvious question of why I went to Israel to study high-technology entrepreneurs instead of coming home to Silicon Valley. In the mid- to late-1990s, Israeli high-technology and particularly technology entrepreneurship really emerged on the international stage.

"With large-scale immigration of skilled workers and massive inflows of international financial capital, Israel proved to be a fantastic case study for how a small country can complete in the knowledge economy. The Israeli high-technology sector was a mirror of what was happening in Silicon Valley at the time, but it was also a throw-back to the early days when Silicon Valley itself was emerging."

The story of immigration is one Khavul knows well. Born Study sheds new light on Israeli high-tech landscape