"From the coauthors of the New York Times bestseller Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle comes the highly anticipated follow up, The Genius of Israel, which outlines the defining factors behind Israel's successful track record of innovation and explaining how other nations can learn from its development.In Start-Up Nation, Saul Singer and Dan Senor addressed the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel-a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? Providing an astute analysis of Israel's unique policies and culture, and practical conclusions about how other nations could learn from its example, Start-Up Nation became a worldwide bestseller, translated into thirty languages. Now in their illuminating follow-up, The Genius of Israel, Senor and Singer study the global innovation race and present a new universal metric to evaluate where different nations stand in the quest to achieve new levels of innovation. They analyze the favorable and unfavorable circumstances that affect a country's chance of making a dramatic leap forward, and illustrate how the world has greatly changed over the last decade. Bold, timely, and remarkably insightful, Senor and Singer's latest work shines an important light on the impressive innovative accomplishments of Israel"--.

Reflects on the 20th century as the Jewish Century; modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, occupationally flexible, etc. In other words, modernization is about everyone becoming Jewish. Analyzes developments in Europe in particular, with a focus on Russia and the USSR. States that the Jews belong to a class of "Mercurian" peoples (i.e. nomadic, middlemen, intellectual, and landless) which had historically kept a distance from the "Apollonian" (i.e. agricultural and warrior) peoples. Because of their "Mercurian" training, the Jews excelled in the entrepreneurial and professional occupations but they were seen as tribal strangers who did not belong in the modern state. The Jewish Age was also the Age of Antisemitism. It was the processes of "Mercurianization" of the Europeans (rapid in the West, but slow in Russia and the USSR) and "Apollonization" of the Jews which brought about the rise of antisemitism. Stresses that, in Russia, the Jews were hated as agents of modernization. Discusses the myth of "Jewish Bolshevism", and Soviet Stalinist and post-Stalinist policies concerning the Jews, noting that Jews were far from being the main victims of Soviet "national" policy.

Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs - and their innovations - have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. "The Invention of Enterprise" gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and, describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society.

"Entrepreneurs have long been drivers of innovation in developed countries. They start companies and create new industries that keep economies strong and prosperous. Today, however, in developing nations such as China, state-controlled economies are building robust industries at stunning speed and siphoning off jobs from the West. How can entrepreneurs function in the face of this challenge? Can they continue to create economic value in a globalized business environment? This book addresses the crucial issue of state planning vs. free enterprise and examines specific problems surrounding entrepreneurship in the global economy through nine case histories of entrepreneurial companies. It also looks at how and why government gets involved in economic growth and how entrepreneurs contribute to economic value. Based on this analysis, the authors argue that companies can succeed, even in controlled economies, by understanding the customs and policies of countries where they do business"--