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Notes -
The Israeli-Palestinian war has me wondering why I can’t think of many global Israeli companies, Israeli intellectuals with global reach, or Israeli billionaires who I would describe as Israeli first (born there and spent there first 18 years). There are many dual citizens. For this exercise people like Roman Abramovich are not Israeli he’s Russian with Israeli citizenship. Same with Adelson. I can also name many intellectuals with Jewish roots who are not Israeli.
I came up with this list for Israeli companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_Israel
And this list for richest Israelis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israelis_by_net_worth
I was going to exclude the Ofer’s because they grew up rich but looks like their dad made their money in Israel before Israeli was Israel so they count. There’s a few more that seemed to be atleast half raised in Israeli. I’d count someone like Adam Neuman as Israeli who left to build in a bigger market.
Maybe I’m missing something but being that Israel is about 40% of global Jewish population I feel like there should be far more heavyweights raised in Israel.
Is this because of an economic factor - economies of scale makes it easier to build globally significant firms in the US/Russia since there is easier access to a large market. And American Jews have it far easier than Israeli Jews to access that scale? I’m not sure why this would apply to academics. I can name a lot of firms and people everyone has heard about from Russia/US but WeWork and Teva would be the only globally significant firms I would assign to Israel.
Or are born and raised Israeli Jews preoccupied with building a state and therefore haven’t built major globally significant things.
AFAIK Mizrahim don't have especially high average IQ (as I understand it their lower average SES is a point of contention in Israel), so they don't really count for purposes of measuring the size of Israel's Jewish talent pool. I also wonder about self-selection of Israeli Ashkenazim. Maybe they didn't get the cream of the crop?
HBD is one factor I thought of. The other was market size. Both seem to have some relevance. But I asks questions to see if people have other ideas.
I still feel like they should have one national champion that is a household name. The Irish have Stripe thought they had to move to California to really get going. Skype from Estonia. For a smallish country it still feels off. I guess they have Teva and WeWork.
Filmmaking makes sense there isn’t much globally as America has more stories to tell. Hedge Funds wouldn’t require the same amount of scale to take off. 30 dudes in an office park can do that anywhere.
Needing people to actually produce domestic goods instead of skimming large markets as noted below makes some sense. Though one hedge fund pulling in a billion in yearly fees would finance a lot of imports. A cultural story like needing to produce more basic goods/self sufficiency is more interesting than falling back on hbd.
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