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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Report: U.S. last in boosting innovation economy

By Brendan Lynch

A report has ranked the United States last in progress toward creating an innovation-based economy since the turn of the century.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report, “The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and U.S. Innovation and Competiveness,” ranked 40 countries on their ability to compete on the basis of innovation in categories such as human capital, innovation capacity, entrepreneurship, IT infrastructure, economic policy factors and economic performance.

The study breaks with other recent studies suggesting the U.S. is a leader in innovation. In overall competitive innovation, the study ranks the U.S. sixth, behind world-leader Singapore. Since the turn of the century, however, the U.S. ranks 40th out of 40 countries, with China leading the pack. The study also finds that if the European Union continues to improve at a faster rate than the U.S., the EU will be more competitive in innovation by 2020.

To reclaim a high standing, the Washington, D.C.-based foundation suggests the U.S. incentivize firms to innovate within its borders, become more open to highly skilled immigrants, foster a digital economy, support innovative institutions and ensure policies and regulations support, rather than retard, innovation. 

Read the full report
 

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Posted by: joy.randels@g... / Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 - 9:14 am EST
I find this report interesting but incorrect at least in the area of information technology. I have led organizations for major and emerging IT vendors for the past 28 years and the past 24 on a global basis. I personally have visited client and vendor operations in 57 countries. We as a country are not as far behind as the article suggests but we do need to work to keep up. The answer however isn't hiring an all new immigrant staff but it is investing in our technology growth. Our companies have become concerned with short term savings versus long term results; we focus on right now and not our future. We have some of the brightest people in the world here today as is evidenced by the global success of many of our technology companies, when it comes to the software side none of the top countries listed even come close to the U.S. and if you look at historically where the innovation has come outside the U.S. it is Israel. We have made tremendous strides far exceeding those of any other country in the area of social media, he U.S. stands virtually alone and EU follows behind us. Social media is a tool but certainly not what will save the world although it should bring down additional borders and assist in educating the world about other cultures if used correctly. If we want to be the global powerhouse in technology then we must invest in programs and incentives that promote entrepreneurship. We are a society that embraces individuality and independence but our business culture is one of following rather than branching out. Those who have skipped the norm have developed some amazing companies that have changed the world like Apple,Microsoft,Sun,Intel,Motorola,IBM,Red Hat,SalesForce.com,LinkedIn,You Tube,Facebook,Symantec...let's not forget who was first and gave others the chance to follow on evolving the technology and building adjunct products. I have worked in China and the reason for their great strides is because the government controls everything related to technology development, use and sales. I don't think we want to adopt socialism in our country so we must think differently about how we incent our people to keep up. We aren't lacking in talent but our government from Washington to the city do not offer incentives and foster emerging companies like many of the countries mentioned. We are capitalist country and we need to provide capitalist incentives in the technology areas where we want to see growth, if we do smart people will follow. If we don't we will simply see more jobs shift offshore, more immigrant workers on H1-B Visas in jobs previously filled by US workers along with our intellectual property leave our shores.

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