June 7th, 2006
What’s Missing from the United States Innovation Agenda?
The National Governors Association recently released a report which acknowledged that they are still using innovation-infrastructure development strategies from the 1990’s. The report is called Enhancing Competitiveness and it reviews the current status of economic development programs in each of the states. The Governors, like the other proponents of President Bush’s Innovation Agenda, cite declining math scores and fewer patents as an indication of our country’s weakening competitiveness.
At ebTDesign, we disagree with the governors and the proponents of the Presidents Innovation Agenda. There are companies in this country that produce thousands of patents a year and, of these patents, roughly ten percent are turned into products. Only a fraction of the products generated from these patents actually make money. In fact, the majority of these patents are used to suppress innovation or cheat other companies out of monies they’ve earned by marketing similar products.
Using outdated innovation-infrastructure development practices is a far bigger problem for this country than declining math scores or fewer patents. US governors are using economic development practices which may predate the commercialization of the Internet and the country is paying the price. For example, some of the governors are investing their state’s monies in film promotion projects. This was a novel idea in the 1980’s and the early part of the 1990’s. These monies would now be better used to create new media promotion projects because of the multiplatform nature of film distribution. This action would not be innovative, however, it would reflect the current business environment. What’s truly missing from the United States Innovation Agenda is a new innovative strategy.
The IT Investment Architect®
Concepts: General, Innovation-Infrastructure