Israel
Israel exhibits hormesis at national scale: a 60% desert nation surrounded by adversity became the world's second-largest startup hub, with 57% of exports from tech.
Israel exemplifies hormesis at the national scale—where stress that should destroy instead strengthens. A country that is 60% desert, surrounded by historically hostile neighbors, with no oil and a population of only 9 million, logically should not rank among the world's most innovative economies. Yet adversity became the selection pressure that drove adaptation.
Water scarcity forced Israel to pioneer desalination and drip irrigation. By 2022, 86% of the country's drinking water came from desalinated seawater—transforming a survival vulnerability into exportable technology. 'If you do not have enough water you cannot have a state,' one official stated. Now Israel sells water technology to neighbors once considered enemies.
Military necessity drove technological development. Mandatory service puts most citizens through intensive training; many engineers first learned their skills in intelligence units. This created a culture where failure is expected, iteration is normal, and solving impossible problems is standard practice. The result: Israel has the second-largest number of startups globally after the United States and the third-most NASDAQ-listed companies after the US and China.
By 2025, high-tech accounted for 57% of all Israeli exports—the highest share ever recorded. Companies raised $15.6 billion in private funding, with the $32 billion Wiz acquisition becoming the largest Israeli tech deal in history. R&D spending reached 6.3% of GDP, among the world's highest. Over 400 multinational corporations—Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google—built R&D centers in a country smaller than New Jersey. The ecosystem exhibits adaptive radiation: a small initial population rapidly diversified to fill available niches, from cybersecurity (20% of global deep-tech investment) to AI to medical devices.