Transcript
I think the hi-tech Industry in Israel has matured tremendously over the last decade or two.
It has grown from generating innovations that get absorbed into a product to innovations that completely change the face of the industry.
And if you look at many of the technologies we use today, from the Centrinos in our laptops to voice mail, Voice Over IP, Instant Messaging, there have been dramatic innovations that have started in Israel, have been adopted by the world markets and have changed the way we communicate and work. I think this trend will increase.

The question of building a local huge giant like a Cisco or the equivalent of Nokia often comes up and I think it is just a matter of time. I am not sure that we will be able to create a world dominant enterprise but I think we will be able to create multi-billion dollar enterprises out of Israel that will have a major position in this global technology playfield. I think there will be more companies of this nature that will arise and become very large players, even if they're not a "Cisco".

And at the same time I think there are a lot of innovations going into the "Ciscos" of the world, the "Intels" of the world coming out of Israel and changing the abilities of those multinationals to be competitive in their fields. I would say that every multinational corporation that has a technology background is constantly monitoring and looking for technology and acquisitions in Israel. There have been many large acquisitions over the past decade or two, so I think the average acquisition has grown from 50 to 100 million.

We've seen acquisitions in 4 and 5 billion dollars. We have seen almost every multinational open a design center in Israel. Some of the larger ones like Intel has six or seven different design centers. Google has opened one and then a second one. Microsoft has opened a second design center in Israel and I think the hi-tech scene is generating so many new ideas and technologies that there are bound to be small, medium and large acquisitions happening over the last few years in Israel. There are several segments where the Israeli contribution, I think, is very noticeable. Some of those segments have to do with technologies being built and expertise being built in the army.
Areas like security, we have companies like Checkpoint.
There is a broad infrastructure of companies building video solutions, voice solutions, communications, raw communications, Encryption and related technologies. There is a broad segment that deals with RF and wireless technologies, satellite technologies.

There is a very broad segment of network management type capabilities and some giants like Amdocs that have leveraged us to a pretty much a world dominant position. In times of recession I think everybody is focused on the fundamentals and a lot of the Israeli innovation and technology is fundamentally valid. And so, given that the heart ship is bigger in times of recession, I think there is a bigger chance for companies that have real assets to become real players as opposed to in times of… in bubble times where you see a lot of the companies being positioned based on better marketing or better optics.
In times of recession it has to be the real deal. And Israel has always been very good at managing resources affectively at taking ground breaking innovation and productizing it. The next wave of companies I think will be built fundamentally on more solid ground and I believe there will be a large number of companies that will change the world.