Although often overshadowed by larger countries, Israel has one of the best tech systems in the world. Companies like Waze (an Israeli startup acquired by Google) and Mobileye (an autonomous driving startup acquired by Intel for $15.3 billion) have seen great success, but it’s the country’s culture that really drives this huge innovation economy.
Robotics and dronesare two areas of particularly rich development due to companies like Fabric (formerly CommonSense Robotics) and Airbotics.
Israelis opened more than 10,000 companies between 1999 and 2014, while 2.6% of them have revenues above 100 million dollars.
Education proves to be one of the most important factors for Israel's growing tech economy. The country's Higher Education Council (CHE) has just released data regarding the distribution of undergraduate students in the academic year 2018-19 that supports this thesis. For the second consecutive year, engineering studies have the highest enrollment (35,041 students, representing 18.4% of the total).
The country promotes engineering to prospective students , and the results are impressive. Over the past ten years, Israel has seen an 80% increase in the number of computer science students.
For decades, the social sciences were the largest fields of study in Israel and were considered the most sought-after large companies. Now, engineering studies have surpassed the social sciences for a second consecutive year.
According to CHE, while law and business administration programs were considered highly desirable courses of study over the past 10 years, recent data shows a 20 to 25 percent decline in enrollment, while technology programs have increased.
CHE - year program to strengthen technological education. Under the program, the Planning and Budget Committee (PBC) has granted academic institutions incentives worth several hundred million roubles for the absorption of students and faculty members, as well as the construction and upgrading of research and educational infrastructure.
There is always the fear that excessive emphasis on a group of scientific disciplines will have harmful long-term consequences. CHE notes that it hopes that schools will work to create interdisciplinary programs that will offer graduates a variety of tools that are not constrained by traditional program boundaries.
