Morocco Looks to Israel’s Tech Success for Inspiration in Growing Digital Economy

In an op-ed published in Médias24, she writes: "How to make the partnership with Israel an opportunity for a transfer of its know-how, knowing that the Israeli model has a strategic orientation, that of the export of its technology; this is done through the sale of intellectual property given the narrowness of its domestic market; the challenge of technological partnership is to define a win-win co-development model".

The academic draws two conclusions. The first conclusion is that Israel is a country that has been industrialized by striving to catch up with the most advanced economies, abandoning the strategy of technological imitation to refocus its industrial policy on research and development activities, both fundamental and applied. "The choice has therefore been for a shock strategy, an industrial policy based on innovation, which has directly concentrated efforts on the most advanced high-tech sectors," she explains.

"Generally, the solutions chosen start with the question of the supply of capital; in Israel, priority has been given to the demand for capital, i.e. the dynamic of creating profitable projects that condition the development of venture capital financing and industry," she adds.

The second conclusion concerns the innovation model method: a system that makes the link between research discoveries and the industrial world, says Ms. Lahrichi, stressing that the state has played a driving role throughout the value chain from the production of ideas and the training of skills to the implementation of projects. "The financing model is based on limited public intervention in terms of scale and duration, the government’s objective being to stimulate and structure a private industry and then withdraw: a starter state for the emergence of startups!", she explains.

The production of ideas takes place in universities. The key feature of the Israeli model is the close interaction between universities