Israeli leadership: A mixture of paranoia and luck

This week Jewcy runs a dialogue I am having with Dov Frohman, founder of Intel Israel, and the author of Leadership The Hard Way.

If you want to read it in full, go to Jewcy. If you want to know what it's about, you can try these couple of paragraphs from my first letter to Frohman:

In a way, your book can be read as a sad story about the booming high-tech industry of Israel. We would have loved to think that Israel?s success in that field is all about Jewish genius, or maybe about our youthful spirit, or about our unique organized-mess way of thinking. And it is ? to a point. But if your book is to be believed, it is less a result of these positive qualities and more thanks to Israelis' paranoid nature.

Here?s a quote from the second chapter, the one officially dealing with survival (the other chapters all deal with the same topic but under different names):

I realize that my preoccupation ? some might say obsession ? with survival is, at least in part, a by-product of my experience as a child during the Second World War.

And here?s one from chapter four, Leadership Under Fire, in which you describe your decision, as the head of Intel Israel, to leave your labs and offices opened as the first Gulf War was forcing factories, businesses and offices to close down because of the threat of Iraqi missiles:

I was convinced that a complete shut-down of our operations threatened the long-term survival of Intel Israel? The key stumbling block to further investment in Israel was the lingering impression of geopolitical instability in the region? I made a quick decision. We weren?t going to take the easy way out. We would ignore the civil defense instruction. We were going to make our people come to work.

Here we have it, in full color: survival meets survival. The need to protect your employees, to help them survive the Iraqi attack, conflicts with the need for the small Israeli branch all-powerful Intel to operate under conditions inherent to the Israeli neighborhood. The Israeli government chose to close the country down ? you chose to go to work despite the government.

This was leadership, you say, but like with all leaders, luck was the key to success or disaster. Had a missile hit Intel, had dozens of workers been hurt, maybe severely, because of your decision - this would have been considered an act of carelessness and bungled priorities.

This is also a motive that runs through the book. Your company had a great invention, the EPROM, which the book says helped Intel?s revenues grow seven-fold, from $9 million in 1971 to $66 million in 1973?). And the EPROM's invention was almost an accident.

So there it is ? my version of your recipe for successful leadership: the perfect mixture of paranoia and luck. The Israeli secret that lead it to become one of the most successful high-tech communities in the world ? a "tiny country" with over 70 companies listed on the U.S. NASDAQ stock exchange ? and "attract twice as much venture capital investment as the entire European Union."