Michael Hagearty
Institute Communications and Public Affairs
Businesses, academia, labor and government must do
more to harness innovation-based strategies or risk
ceding America’s historic leadership as the world’s
economic power, warned the Council
on Competitiveness in a new report entitled “Innovate
America: Thriving in a World of Challenge and Change.”
The findings — based on the work of more than
400 industry, government and academic leaders —
present a new sense of purpose and mission, and suggest
mechanisms to drive the pace and quality of the national
innovation enterprise. The report was part of the National
Innovation Initiative (NII) Summit, held last month
in Washington, D.C.
In
its report*, the NII recommended action in three
key categories. Some of the proposals include:
Talent:
• Establish tax-advantaged lifelong
learning accounts to promote continuous learning
and new skills.
• Improve health and pension portability.
• Reform immigration policies to attract
the top science and engineering students.
Investment:
• Allocate 3 percent of all federal
agency research and development budgets toward
grants that invest in novel, high-risk and exploratory
research.
• Establish 10 "Innovation Hot Spots"
at regional locations over the next five years.
• Reduce the cost of tort litigation by
50 percent, or 1 percent of the gross domestic
product.
Infrastructure:
• Develop new metrics to understand
innovation performance.
• Build quality into all phases of the patent
process.
• Transform the patent database into a searchable
tool.
• Build a 21st century network infrastructure
with healthcare as the test bed.
*The
full report is available for download at www.compete.org. |
“Innovation has been the hallmark of the American
economy long before the Industrial Revolution, but today
innovation belongs to no single country,” said
President Wayne Clough, who co-chaired the National
Innovation Initiative. “Today we can take
nothing for granted. Delivering on the agenda set out
in this report will have a substantial and immediate
impact today while laying the groundwork for future
generations to prosper.”
Innovation generates the productivity that economists
estimate has accounted for half of U.S. gross domestic
product growth over the past 50 years. Innovation gives
rise to new industries and markets, fuels wealth creation
and profits and generates higher-paying jobs. As more
nations embrace market economies and compete on traditional
cost and quality terms, it is this ability to create
new value that will confer a competitive edge.
“The importance of innovation lies less in the
competitive victory of one country over others than
in building a better world for everyone. America can
be an engine of change and a driver of prosperity,”
said IBM Chairman Samuel Palmisano, who served as co-chair
of the National Innovation Initiative. “The challenge
and opportunity to the United States is to respond to
the historic shifts of our age by optimizing American
society for innovation. At this critical time recommendations
from the National Innovation Initiative can be a catalyst
for positive change.”
Organized into seven working groups, members of the
NII spent 15 months developing its recommendations.
Provost Jean-Lou Chameau chaired the working group on
innovation frontiers, and a number of Tech professors
participated in the groups.
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