Focusing on unemployment isn't the key to fueling innovation and job growth
Co-written by Jim Clifton

How can we be expected to grow and create jobs, many executives wonder, when we are shrinking?

Despite a slight easing on the unemployment rate last week, a quarter million Americans lost...

Recently, it has become more widely acknowledged that long-term economic recovery and growth in this country isn't going to come in the form of bailouts or stimulus packages, but instead in our ability to innovate and create new high-growth businesses. As Tom Friedman wrote in a recent column, "We might...

As a business leader, imagine trying to manage more than 7000 scientists from 85 countries around the world - with their own languages, cultures, and expertise - on a 20-year collaboration to create the most complex system ever built.

Now imagine the goal is to recreate the conditions a...

If I were a venture capitalist in the year 65.5 million B.C. and had to make an investment choice that would change the future of planet Earth, the conversation might go something like this:

Dinosaur: "We're the largest, most dominant species on the entire planet. If we die, 75...

Manny Ramirez and his dreadlocks have a lock on L.A. Dodgers' fans' hearts and minds, and are a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame. But I'd like to nominate him for one more honor: Baseball's MIP--Most Innovative Player.

No joke. I take quite seriously the meaning of innovation in...

Originally published on BusinessWeek.com.

Sándor was only 23 when the Soviets lined him and his co-workers up against the wall and raised their weapons.

Accused of transmitting anti-Soviet messages from the local television tower, the young engineers desperately tried to explain their innocent intentions: to protect...

They say a change will do you good. And it seems like every presidential candidate is pounding furiously on the "change" drum. But even though I run an innovation institute at a major research university, I'm here to say that you can keep the change.

As novelist...

I'm not a screenwriter. Or a studio bigwig. And with the writer's strike, I don't have a dog in this hunt. But as an expert in innovation, I can say with authority that Hollywood is desperate for a little innovation.

Many will say, "Innovation? That's what got us into this...