If you mention a successful startup called Ness Technologies, there is a good chance that a US listener will assume it is one of those high-technology Silicon Valley companies. That listener would be mistaken. Ness Technologies is a multinational information technology (IT) services corporation, created in Israel in 1999. It is also the first company in this book that does not have its headquarters in the US.

This chapter will examine how the Israeli entrepreneurs who founded Ness dealt with the challenges of a global marketplace. Within five years of its founding, this Israeli startup became a leading company in its field with operations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Its rapid rise to prominence has fully justified its name, which means “miracle” in Hebrew. It did so by melding subsidiaries in countries with cultures as diverse as Bulgaria and Thailand into a global corporate culture, with a common set of goals and expectations that was held across national boundaries.

DEMAND FOR IT SERVICES RESHAPES THE WORLD

Ness Technologies is a provider of IT services to other companies. As such it didn’t “invent” any basic technology. Like Ronald Stanton’s Transammonia, its innovations took the form of a new business model and new approaches to international service. Unlike Transammonia, however, Ness operated in an industry characterized by the most rapidly advancing technology in history. Even those who lived through the rise of the computer can hardly believe how quickly and profoundly digital data processing has changed the way the world does business.