Virtual Entrepreneur

An Entrepreneurial Path To Peace

By providing small businesses with incubators, Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer hopes to give Israelis and Arabs economic opportunities that will lead to peace.

BusinessWeek:
About 5 years ago, Stef Wertheimer came across Gamila Hiar, a Druze woman with no formal education who had learned the ancient art of making soap from wild herbs and olive oil as a child. At the time, Hiar was supplementing her family’s income, producing about 500 soap bars a week, from a corner in a room underneath her house in Pqi’in, a village in the Galilee region of northern Israel.

When Wertheimer met Hiar, her soaps had a devoted local following and were referred to as ‘the magic soaps of Gamila’ for their restorative properties. Wertheimer was impressed. ‘We found that she was an entrepreneur,’ says Wertheimer. ‘She just needed more space to dry her soaps. I asked her if she wanted to come to one of my industrial parks.’

Hiar, now 68, ended up at Tefen Industrial Park, a bold philanthropic enterprise located about eight miles from the Lebanese border. Wertheimer, the founder of Iscar Metalworking, established Tefen in 1985 in order to encourage entrepreneurship in one of Israel’s most undeveloped and low-income regions, with a population split largely between Arabs and Jews. According to Wertheimer, 81, ‘there are no unemployed, only people who are unlucky to find a job.’

The Tefen model is based on a business and social incubator concept. In a country with few natural resources and a tiny domestic market, its purpose is to help develop businesses that manufacture for export. Startups are given space to rent and a number of business and administrative services (usually at reduced fees or for free) such as help in business planning, marketing, and entrepreneurship, and access to postal and banking facilities. Although many of the companies are small, the park’s structure allows each firm to operate and export on a much larger scale than it could were it operating independently. After a company has established itself, it is expected to leave and become independent. On average, the companies stay between 5 and 10 years. That allows new businesses to take their place.