Saul Singer of Start-Up Nations
Saul Singer
Saul Singer: Journalist, Author
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Saul Singer is the co-author, with Dan
Senor, of the best-selling book Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic
Miracle. The book has reached #5 on the
New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller lists, and is also a
bestseller in Israel, India, and Singapore. Also, he is an editorial board
member at the Times of Israel and serves on the advisory boards of Vintage
Investment Partners, an Israeli fund of funds, and Tevel B’Tsedek, an Israeli
NGO working in Nepal, Haiti, and Burundi. Today, he shares with us how he
started up his unique life.
Today, everybody talks about innovation.
Many books try to figure out the magic formula to accelerate innovation.
Companies invest tons of money into making innovation happen. What do we truly
need to know about innovation?
-----For those who are not familiar with
you tell us more about you. How did you get interested in journalism and
writing?
I started in journalism when I moved to
Israel 20 years ago, working for a newspaper called the Jerusalem Post. I have
no training in journalism, but my background in policy, from staff work in the
US Congress, prepared me for writing editorials and eventually my own weekly
opinion column.
-----When you write something, what happens
in your mind? Do you know what you want to write from the beginning or do you
articulate it gradually?
I find that ideas come from writing, rather
than writing from ideas. Good writing usually requires clear thinking, but
writing is often an important means to clarify thinking.
-----What was the most difficult thing when
you experienced when you published your book? How has that experience changed
your life?
The most difficult thing was to invest a lot of time and effort without knowing whether anyone would actually see the result. The book completely changed my professional focus. Before the book I mostly wrote about strategy and politics. I have since become immersed in the much more interesting and exciting world of innovation, particularly, how countries become innovative. My travels to many countries to speak about the book have opened my eyes to the changing global map of innovation.
-----When you start something new, there
are so many unpredictable things. Looking back, what allowed you to take a leap
of faith?
Ignorance helps. If I had thought too much
about the chances of a book becoming successful, I might never have written it.
All entrepreneurship involves a suspension of disbelief. Daniel Kahneman has
written about the paradox that the most successful people have an essentially
irrational approach toward assessing risk
, and that progress and growth seem to be
driven by such people.
-----Through your research and experience,
what makes certain people think differently?
The main barriers to thinking differently
are social and psychological rather than individual capability. Water likes to
take the easiest, well-worn, path and so do we. I think that creative people
don’t necessarily have more ideas than anyone else, they are just more driven
and willing to stray from the well-worn path.
-----What is the most important thing you
have ever learned in your life and why?
Victor Frankl was right; the greatest human
need is for meaning. Most people are trying to make their life easier, but
that’s not where meaning comes from. I know of only three sources of meaning:
spirituality (belief or struggle), relationships (family and friends), and work
(paid or not; what we do to have an impact on the world around us). We should
be trying to bolster all three sources of meaning in our lives as much as we
can.
-----When you hear the word “successful”,
who is the first person that comes to your mind and why?
It takes a lot of courage to actually do
anything. I admire people who can build companies that change the world. I also
admire people who can help one person at a time. Sometimes that takes even more
courage
-----What does “life” mean to you?
Life is the pinnacle of creation. We are
entering an age when we have to discover and re-discover what it means to be
human. We are living in one of the most exciting moments in history. In this
century, human life is changing faster than it ever has, and maybe faster than
it ever will be.
-----If you could make a call to
20-year-old Saul Singer, what kind of advice would you give to him?
Get more experiences. Get out of your
comfort zone. Educate yourself by building things and learning from people, not
just in schools. Study stuff that you wouldn’t normally touch outside of
school, like great literature, philosophy. Find ways to force yourself to write
more often because that’s the only way to learn how to write – and other forms
of creative communication.
-----If you could leave one message to make
the world better, what would be your message?
There so much that needs to be done; finds
something that matters to you and
do it. But in order to get stuff done, you
also need to build your own character (see The Road to Character, by David
Brooks). We often forget that part.
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