I've advised two governments on how to increase commercial growth; Japan and Sweden.
In the case of Japan I focused on the need for a society to draw
from a global market of talent. A dynamic economy needs creative
immigration. Japan could only do that by creating a base of operations
in Hawaii. Japan, the long stretch of islands, has never been a
comfortable place for immigrants. The Japanese government chose not to
follow my
recommendations, they were politically unfeasible, but several major
companies did follow my advice and establish research facilities
in Hawaii: Sony, Fujitsu, Mitsui, Matsushita, Epson and Uniden.
Creative foreigners working for Japanese companies are now comfortable
living in Hawaii.
In Sweden my work was stunningly successful and my work directly
created the major source of Swedish small business exports over two
decades starting in 1981. My approach was copied in France and
Germany. Germany copied my Swedish model and actually exported it back
to the United States as part of the German Marshall Fund.
The Swedish model was based on the 1,000 businesses I worked with when I created the Briarpatch Network
in the San Francisco Bay Area. The model had new and small businesses
learn together cooperatively in a network to overcome the main hurdles
of the first two years in business. The survival rate was stunning: 90% survived over five years.
I
doubt that Israel could accept the advice I gave to Japan. Tel Aviv is
great fun, but could not handle a large 100k non-Jewish global
immigrant population. At present Israeli's start major businesses in
America to get the benefit of immigrant workers. These businesses (400
on the U.S. stock markets) could become sources of Israeli growth with
the right Israeli tax policies...that may someday happen.
I don't know how Israel would respond to the advice and training I gave Sweden.
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