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Book Review: Start-Up Nation

Written by: Jay Hamilton-Roth

Article Overview: “The Story Of Israel’s Economic Miracle” can also become the story of how to launch/wildly succeed your own business. Dan Senor & Saul Singer answer the question, “How does a country of 7.1 million – surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, and with no natural resources - produce more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?”

Book Review: Start-Up Nation

“The Story Of Israel’s Economic Miracle” can also become the story of how to launch/wildly succeed your own business. Dan Senor & Saul Singer answer the question, “Howdoes a country of 7.1 million – surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, and with no natural resources- produce more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?” The authors have identified a number of key characteristics that can be translated to any business in any country:

Individual Generalists. Contrary to popular thinking, you want to endow your team with a variety of skills that allows them to understand and solve other areas of expertise. You want the brightest experts in a field working for you, but to make them even more valuable, they should be able to see how to solve other challenges in your company. Think about an artist who can fix your IT network, or a programmer who’s a marketing whiz.

Challenging The Status Quo. Israeli culture isn’t interested in preserving the status quo. They are constantly on vigil for new challenges to their country since their competition is evolving. Instead of being content following “best practices”, regularly question actions and results. This means that rigid hierarchical business models are flattened – anyone can question anyone else’s action, and everyone is responsible to sharing how and why they did what they did. By learning what’s working in a changing world, everyone in the culture wins, and everyone outside of the culture is never truly sure the response to their actions.

Empower People Early. In the Israeli military, after a short basic training, new soldiers are giving challenging missions and are expected to succeed. They quickly form teams, quickly analyze the problem, quickly given resources, and their results are measured (from all perspectives). Most businesses would never consider giving a new hire lots of responsibility (and a big chance to fail). But by empowering, you’re building strong teams quickly and truly valuing each team member’s ability to contribute.

Risk Is Good. Most larger companies are risk-averse. They’re looking to maintain their market share. But true growth can only come from taking wise chances. Be bold, study the competition well, and try. Afterwards, learn from the action and make sure everyone in your culture benefits.

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Article Tags: innovation, startup



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Re: Top 50 Lists - Hi Evan, How about "Top 50": -Inventor Blogs To Watch -Franchising Blogs To Watch -Business Book Review Blogs -Women Entrepreneur Blogs -Young Entrepreneur Blogs
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
Re: Significance of Review Sites - Exactly! Review sites are very helpful for providing better understanding to a product or service.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
UPDATES: Rules & Guidelines for Review My... - HI everyone, Just before the weekend approaches, wanted to let everyone know that the rules and guidelines for the new forum Review My... are up! The forum is meant for our members to ask for some constructive and honest critiques on their products, services or websites. Since it's a new addition, if you have any suggestions feel free to speak up. Have a great weekend everybody! Cheers, Ringo


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