False Arguments Against an American Innovation Agenda

Now that the decks are cleared for the big November presidential showdown, I am praying -- in earnest -- for a meaningful discussion of America's national innovation agenda. There has been scant sign of this to date, a few token mentions of the "I" word not withstanding.

In this election year, expect the skeptical or the indifferent to raise a litany of objections to having a national innovation agenda in the first place. In my own work as a self-appointed innovation gadfly, I get this kind of thing all the time. Here are five of my all-time favorites.

1) What's the problem? We're #1 -- The World Economic Forum says America has the world's most competitive economy. And INSEAD's rating places us #1 among innovative nations. I think this points to the danger of focusing on a snapshot, not a movie. There is no doubt that our lead is falling in many other areas whose long-term impact will be significant for our ability to innovate: public education, support for young scientists, and science funding strategies being only some of the more obvious examples.

2) Having an innovation agenda is just another excuse for big government and bureaucrats to waste our money. Isn't this just another version of the discredited policy of picking winners? Anyone who has met me will quickly realize that I'd be the last person to champion yet another form of government bureaucracy. I readily admit that modern history is littered with examples of government technocrats in ivory towers merrily pouring tax payer money down a dark hole; supercomputing in Japan as advocated by their Ministry of Trade and Industry being a particularly notorious example.

What I am proposing though is that not having a strategy is no longer a viable strategy for us; even the mighty United States will need to set priorities and funding mechanisms in order to capitalize on its assets. Smart CEO's don't succeed by telling their talent what to do; they create an environment in which breakthroughs can emerge with appropriate resources and attention. Should we expect any less from our politicians?

3) We're good at innovation -- look at how strong our science and technology are -- Again, if we take a snapshot of today, America's preeminence in science is still unquestioned -- if we play the story out into the future, the situation is much less rosy as expressed in continuing decline of Interest in science among the young. We also underpay our young scientific talent, which makes it more likely that they will be attracted to working in other countries in the future. And don't get me started about ideological contamination of funding priorities. Most importantly, more science does not automatically translate into more innovation. Discovery is an important part, but only a part, of the innovation process. Science and technology need to bridge with entrepreneurs and designers in order to create the products and services that will create customer benefit. So just funding science alone will not necessarily advance innovation.

4) Others will never be able to imitate us because we've got our wildass American culture -- There is some real truth to this. In fact our culture of risk-taking and enterprise is very much a part of our secret sauce for innovation. To be candid, most of the innovation hot spots I've touted in this blog are still relatively unforgiving of business failure. Try getting a loan, let alone an appointment, in Singapore if your last company went down the tubes for example

The question is whether our culture of innovation will matter in the long run from a competitive perspective. We are now in a world in which if you need American business values, you'll simply be able to hire an American -- or five hundred of them. Set up a "wild ass preserve" and then deploy your existing competencies to create value. Japanese car and Korean consumer electronics companies have been doing this for years; their design labs are often located in Southern California and filled with wild and crazy Americans...who work for others that lack their own culture of innovation and successfully insource it instead.

5) Who needs an innovation agenda? We've got more important issues to deal with -- The indifference of the American public to the innovation agenda is one of the mysteries of the 2008 election in my book. Sure we've got immediate economic and national security issues. But the big issues of day -- energy policy, health care reform, education -- are the kind of wicked problems that desperately require innovation at a time when the skills of large-scale innovation and collaboration are lacking both in government and society at-large. Innovation isn't just about iPods; it's about our future.

I could go on, but you get the point. As Stephen Colbert said to me when I was on his show last October, "Will we even know we have a problem if we're not willing to admit we have a problem?" I rest my case.

Comments

[RRK70]

Innovation isn't the problem, the problem lies in commercial application. Corporate America is fixated on quarterly profit and is adverse to the risk inherent in the application of new technology. I would think that if it were not for the cost-plus structure of the majority of defense contracts we would not see nearly as much development in the military industry either. What our nation needs is some leadership, some initiative that will allow what remains of corporate America to profit from innovative new technologies. As it seems that corporations are leading our politicians instead of the other way around, this is asking a lot.

[Cathexis]

We lost our Innovation cred years ago, when American Business decided that their focus would be "cut costs to focus on next quarter's numbers." It is ironic that we have been sitting around patting ourselves on the back for being such Innovative Entrepeneurs even while our grad schools are increasingly filled with Asian PhD students and our R&D budgets continue to dry up as a result of cost cutting.

We are amongst the most deluded nations in the world and it will almost be amusing to see how shocked folks will be when they finally wake up to discover that India, China, Brazil, and a host of other "lesser" countries have eaten our lunch and edged us out of the buffet line for dinner.

All because we're too arrogant to look around and see what is already happening. that, and we're too damned cheap to effectively run a business -- cutting our long-term feet out from under us to make Wall Street happy by the end of this quarter.

[KillTheMessenger]

Innovation is simply a function of investment. The US is very innovative where it wants to be, but sadly, these days it seems to have restricted itself to innovate in the field of warfare. We spend insane amounts of money on weapons R&D and almost nothing on everything else. The result is that we can hit a bull's eye from everywhere in the world at any time and make an HD quality movie of the kill. And that is pretty much all we can do.

[NABNYC]

U.S. businesses quite simply have abandoned the country. They were encouraged to do so by politicians who receive kick-backs and bribes from the businesses. The politicians support taking work to third world countries to be done by slave, prison, and child labor with no workers' rights, and no environmental or other restrictions. I suppose we could say that the boys on wall street and in D.C. have simply sold out the country for a few pieces of silver.

Innovation comes during work, on the floor, in the design rooms, by the people making the products. When the manufacturing is shipped overseas, the opportunity for innovation is also. Our country is being stripped bare of opportunity and a future. If we make shoes here, then we will innovate in the field of shoe design and manufacturing. In order to help us do that, we need to prevent other countries from dumping their shoes inside the U.S. The same is true for all businesses.

We working people need protection from the world. The politicians tell us that we are part of the global market, we can't fight change -- it's all a lie to cover up their betrayal of the people of the U.S. It's the same thing the Mexican elite tell to their starving farmers who are put out of business by U.S. imports being dumped into their country. Only a very few benefit from "global" trade. Everyone else is a big loser.