[Editor’s Note: Perry B. Newman is a consultant in Portland, Maine. We were discussing how Entrevestor could write more about startups in Maine when he proposed a guest column on what we in this region could learn from Israel. Here's the result.]

There’s much to be said for collaboration and coordination in both entrepreneurial and economic development efforts. We get ideas from each other. We share resources, and we create critical mass that enhances the potential for our success. We build virtual teams and virtual companies, and we construct paradigms that allow us to punch above our weight.

In general we seek to marry the resources we have with those that we lack, and our culture celebrates the fact that we come together in a supportive environment. After all, the mantra goes, we’re small and isolated; if we don’t band together, we will never make progress.

Yet even as we join hands and congratulate ourselves on our successes, we should be asking ourselves, Is this the best we can do? With all the resources at our disposal – public, private and political – shouldn’t we be doing even better?

Anyone who has been to Israel or is familiar with that country’s stunning innovation and entrepreneurial success would say we have a long way to go.

Israel is a country of only 7.7 million people, surrounded by antagonists and reviled by much of the world. It has almost no water, and for its entire 65 year history has had to import all of its energy, other than what it has been able to harness from the sun. Many of its neighbors deny its existence, forbid its citizens entry, forbid its commercial aircraft to fly overhead, and actively seek to destroy it.

Yet there are more Israeli companies traded on the NASDAQ than those of every other country except the United States and China. There are more start-ups per capita in Israel than anywhere else in the world, and more start-ups in absolute numbers than any country except the United States. There are more scientific papers published per capita and more Ph.D.’s per capita in Israel than any country in the word.

Google, Microsoft, Intel, SAP, HP, GE and many other global leaders have R&D centers in Israel.

The 2013 United Nations Human Development Report lists Israel in its Human Development Index as the 16^th highest ranking nation in the world (the United States is #6; Canada is #11; Singapore is #19; France is #20; United Kingdom is #27.)

So striking is Israel’s economic transformation that if Israel had any water to speak of, it would be natural to wonder just what’s in it.  

In fact, many are beginning to investigate the Israeli economic miracle. Beginning with Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s best-seller, Start-up Nation, Israel’s remarkable ascent into the first rank of highly developed countries has been the subject of numerous articles and, more recently, study visits by political leaders and universities alike.

Most would agree that there are a number of factors that contribute to Israel’s success, but perhaps most striking among these are a culture that supports risk-taking, a national sense of necessity, pride in national achievement, a willingness to go it alone and what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the American civil rights leader, termed “the fierce urgency of now.”

Of course, it has taken more than guts for Israel to achieve technology glory. Outstanding universities, enlightened government technology support and an influx of serious talent (notably emancipated Soviet Jewish scientists in the 1970s) continue to contribute to what may be the world’s finest technology ecosystem.

Above all, however, Israel has shown that grit and the defining cultural characteristic of chutzpah, characteristics common to all successful entrepreneurs, may be more decisive and determinative of success than the collaborations we are all so keen to achieve.

The message from Israel is therefore both inspiring and cautionary: Build the networks and share the resources, but never be afraid to go it alone. Cooperate and collaborate, but relish your independence. When you fall, get back up, and when you fail, never give up. Refuse to lose and remember – no one is going to get it done but you.

Perry B. Newman is founder and president of Atlantica Group LLC, an international business development firm based in Portland, Maine and active throughout North America, Israel, France and India. More information available at http://www.perrybnewman.com.