ABSTRACT
Institutional or organizational entrepreneurs are actors who leverage resources to create new institutions or transform existing ones by creating new systems of meanings tying together disparate sets of institutions together. The two entrepreneurs – Avraham Arnan who founded Sayeret Matkal and Uri Yarom who established Squadron 124 – served with the pre-state Palmach and then Israel Defense Force (IDF), but did not know each other until 1957. Uri Yarom was the first commander of the IDF's first helicopter squadron founded in 1958. Both Arnan and Yarom had established careers and had already networked within the IDF. The IDF's creation, military entrepreneurs have been highly aware of the value of 'symbolic capital' for military formations. Arnan was not the first to found special operations forces in the IDF and using aerial vehicles to gather intelligence marked the IDF for years before Yarom initiated what was to become Squadron 124.
