Building for Foreign Investment: Israel's Globalization Card

Prime locations in Tel Aviv are developed with an eye at foreign investors and companies 

Globalization has not played a wide ranging role in Israeli business until recently (the last fifteen years). While entrepreneurs were happy to work with foreign investors, and American companies were happy to design and manufacture products here, for the most part, business management was done somewhere else. But the last decade this has changed dramatically. Many foreigners and companies are happy to work, live and collaborate with Israelis. Foreign investment and business collaboration is growing steadily. This is pushing the luxury apartment and office building boom even more than local growth. Israel's government is not tracking and publishing foreign investment in specific sector such as construction. But it is safe to say, there is a sizable contribution from global investors. 

Israel is in a unique position of cooperating in business and engineering for over fifty years. At first French and other European countries brought industrial technology to Israel. In the 1960s and 70s American companies came with Israelis returning from academic training. Then came Israelis with backing from American companies (most notably Dov Frohman from Intel, see Wikipedia) to start R&D centers. IBM Haifa research center (see Wikipedia) is also a notable early American expansion into the Israeli technology space. Today the trend to open R&D centers in Israel is continuing with Asian companies. While the technology sector is the most known and traditionally look at as the best fit, biotechnology, finance and recently robotics and machine automation are also seen as a good fit for foreign investors. This is an interesting and evolving story, keep coming back for more details.