Selon l’étude menée par le professeur Shmuel Ellis, président du département de gestion de la Faculté de gestion de l’université de Tel Aviv, en collaboration avec le professeur Israel Drori de la School of Business Administration du Collège de Management et le professeur Zur Shapira, présidente du Département de gestion et d’organisation de l’université de New York, le Groupe RAD, fondé en 1981 par les frères Yehuda et Zohar Zisapel, a été le « terrain le plus fertile » pour créer des entrepreneurs israéliens, ayant produit 56 « entrepreneurs en série » ayant créé plus d’une société chacun. Les « diplômés » du Groupe RAD sont responsables de la mise en place de 111 initiatives significatives de haute technologie.
Zohar Zisapel (born February 15, 1949; Hebrew: זהר זיסאפל), is a successful Israeli entrepreneur in Israel’s advanced high-tech industry, sometimes referred to as « the Bill Gates of Israel. »The RAD Group of companies he co-founded with his brother, Yehuda, has been called « the world’s most successful incubator » of telecom-related start-ups by Business 2.0 magazine.
The RAD Group employs 4,500 people and closed 2015 with a total of $1.234 billion in global sales. Four RAD Group companies are currently traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange: Ceragon Networks, Radware , RADCOM, and Silicom.
Zisapel was born in Tel Aviv, one of three children of immigrant parents from Poland who owned and ran a shoe store on Herzl Street, then one of the city’s main arteries. He received a public education and upon graduation from high school he enrolled as a student at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Technion and later earned an MBA from Tel Aviv University. To help finance his education, he worked in his spare time supplying lighting to Tel Aviv discos, eventually becoming the largest manufacturer of strobe lights in the country.
Following his undergraduate education at the Technion, Zisapel completed his compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), after which he was hired by the Electronic Research Department of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, ultimately serving as its head.. He received the Israel Defense Prize in 1979 for his work.
Family
Zisapel is known throughout Israel’s business community for his penchant for wearing jeans and sandals while at work and his preference for flying economy class while traveling abroad. He is the father of two children: a daughter, Klil, an accomplished artist and Hebrew writer whose books have been translated into German, Dutch and Chinese; and Michael, a physician.
