Many technology industry leaders are worried that the United States is losing its innovative edge and that companies are focusing on short-term gains while sacrificing long-term technological dominance. “The trend lines show that we are not maintaining the kind of coordinated support behind innovation that we need to,” says venture capitalist Pascal Levensohn. “Innovation and entrepreneurship, the crucial growth engines of the U.S. economy, are at risk of stalling out.” Levensohn says the U.S. is in danger of losing its technological edge unless leaders enact new approaches to pursuing innovation. He says that three major trends–a growing focus on incremental innovation instead of basic research, declining research spending, and the global recession–have created a “technology investment plight.” Open-ended scientific research leads to breakthrough innovations, such as the development of the laser and the Internet, but such research is expensive and does not guarantee a direct payoff. Meanwhile, later-stage spending on research and development, geared toward new products, has declined in the United States while other countries have increased their research and development investments. The global financial crisis and failure of large financial institutions is only deepening the problem. A study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) that used 16 indicators to assess the global competitiveness of 40 nations and regions found the U.S. has made the least progress on improving international competitiveness and innovation during the last decade. “The U.S. still has enormous strengths in capacity and performance,” says ITIF report author Robert Atkinson. “But we’re in worse shape than people think. We’ve been losing ground relative to every other nation.”
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Tags: Innovation
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