By Noam Eliaz ~
Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard is circled by Bauhaus cafes and buildings, but behind glass dividers, the thrum of innovation is underway. In co-working offices, towers, and well-lit flats, some of the most ubiquitous apps and technologies in the world have been developed in stealth mode. From cyber security to navigation, e-health to farming, Israel’s startup economy is a leading-edge global hub of innovation—leading industries, undoubtedly, but our lives, livelihoods, and ways of relating.
Waze: Controlling Traffic
More used internationally—and used more frequently from mobiles—than any Israeli invention is Waze, the GPS traffic app that made use of real-time crowdsourced traffic data to change the face of the daily commute map. Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar, and Uri Levine created it in 2006. The three implemented a revolutionary concept into mass practice: real-time crowdsourced traffic information. It was David’s moment in a garage that became a worldwide phenomenon of drivers providing each other with comments on traffic, speed cameras, and potholes.
Mobileye: Eyes on the Road, Mind on the Mission
While the world wasn’t even thinking about autonomous cars yet, at least one Israeli firm was already on that path. Mobileye, established in 1999 by Professor Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, began researching computer vision technology to enable cars to “see” and react to their surroundings—avoid crashes and save lives.
Its driver-assist technology was present in more than 125 million cars globally before being gobbled up by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion. Mobileye is now pushing autonomous driving to the limit and even started its robotaxi trials in Tel Aviv and Munich.
Lemonade: Revolutionizing Insurance with AI
In a field less often regarded as red tape than imagination, Lemonade disrupted the status quo. Born in Tel Aviv, this startup changed the face of insurance with artificial intelligence and behavioral economics. With a speedy app, Lemonade consumers sign up for renters, homeowners, and pet insurance in minutes—and even get paid claims in seconds.
Set up by Shai Wininger and Daniel Schreiber in 2015, Lemonade was a social-business venture where unclaimed premiums were returned to causes users themselves chose. Its 2020 NYSE IPO was the most technology-intensive launch of the year. It now covers American, European, and international consumers on equal terms—proof that fintech and charity don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
OrCam: Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired
Technology changes lives in deep ways, particularly when married with a basic human need. Kneel before OrCam Technologies, the business of Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua. OrCam created the OrCam MyEye, which is a glasses-based wearable device using artificial intelligence that assists the blind to “read” text, identify faces, and read objects with speech output.
Backed by instructors and the disabled community, the product has enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe to achieve a new level of autonomy. It was featured on TIME Magazine’s “best inventions of the year,” and today is localized in over 25 languages.
Netafim: Innovation in Agriculture Drop by Drop
Though Israel’s tech hero is built on software and AI to a large degree, one of its most stunning achievements began on the ground floor. Israeli engineer Simcha Blass developed a way to deliver water to plant roots directly back in the 1960s—technology that went on to bloom into Netafim, the world’s largest drip irrigation company.
Netafim irrigates more than 110 countries around the world today, enabling farmers to produce more with less water—a critical edge in the era of climate change and starvation. Drip irrigation was touted by the UN as the greatest sustainable development technology, and Netafim’s revolutionary model is in action from California to Kenya.
More Than a Nation—A Mindset
Israel’s high-tech export success is not based on programming skills or engineering competence but a mindset developed from out of necessity, improvisation, and persistence. Under conditions of water scarcity, local competition, and scarce natural resources, Israelis never had to think their way out.
This research-driven world university-powered innovation, having a robust defense R&D and an invested-in community, continues to develop solutions making a difference on every continent. And as much as no all product or app is showstopping, many are felt—tacit but profound—one day at a time.
While Israel continues to test what is achievable, one thing is for sure: that in a tiny nation with grand ambitions, the next revolution that will alter the world is never more than a line of code—or an imaginative leap on the part of a single visionary—away.
