EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

A STRATEGY FOR AMERICAN INNOVATION: DRIVING TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND QUALITY JOBS

History should be our guide. The United States led the world’s economies in the 20th century because we led the world in innovation. Today, the competition is keener; the challenge is tougher; and that is why innovation is more important than ever. It is the key to good, new jobs for the 21st century. That’s how we will ensure a high quality of life for this generation and future generations. With these investments, we’re planting the seeds of progress for our country, and good-paying, private-sector jobs for the American people.”
-President Barack Obama, August 5, 2009

Since taking office, President Obama has taken historic steps to lay the foundation for the innovation economy of the future. The Obama Innovation Strategy builds on well over $100 billion of Recovery Act funds that support innovation, additional support for education, infrastructure and others in the Recovery Act and the President’s Budget, and novel regulatory and executive order initiatives. It seeks to harness the inherent ingenuity of the American people and a dynamic private sector to ensure that the next expansion is more solid, broad-based, and beneficial than previous ones. It focuses on critical areas where sensible, balanced government policies can lay the foundation for innovation that leads to quality jobs and shared prosperity. It has three parts:

Download full PDF Here.

General Electric Co. (GE), in a bid to better compete in emerging markets and elsewhere, is changing its method of innovation and developing products in low-cost countries, such as China and India, then distributing them worldwide.

“Innovation is more important than ever,” declares President Barack Obama in a white paper released yesterday. A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs doesn’t exactly break new ground, but the 22-page report does present a good snapshot of where we are now.

It doesn’t pull its punches, either. The first few pages provide historical context, painting a bleak picture of American dystopia, an America limping along with a broken economy, a neglected, out-of-date education system, decaying infrastructure (both physical and virtual) and out-of-control health care costs. But read on! The Obama Administration is here to help, and looking not only to avoid unsustainable, bubble-driven growth but also to avoid “unproductive and anachronistic debate” about the government’s future role. “The true choice in innovation is not between government and no government, but about the right type of government involvement in support of innovation,” says the report.

The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents.

That could be changing. Wrangling over patents is beginning to move out of the courtroom and into the marketplace. A flurry of new companies and investment groups has sprung up to buy, sell, broker, license and auction patents. And venture capital and private equity is starting to pour into the field.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, squeezing in an eleventh-hour pitch for his domestic agenda, is promoting his administration's promises of innovation at a New York community college before weeklong meetings on international priorities.

Obama heads to Troy, N.Y., on Monday to discuss his already-in-place programs that he says help spur innovation and transform the U.S. economy. He then moves on to New York City, where he will become the first sitting U.S. president to appear on David Letterman's "Late Show" couch — another example of a White House strategy designed to put Obama in front of as many cameras as possible to sell his message to a skeptical public.

Before embarking on a week of high-level diplomacy, President Obama stopped off at a community college near Albany, N.Y., to tout a host of education programs.

"In the coming years, jobs requiring at least an associate's degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience," Obama said at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy.

McLean, VA (PRWEB) September 21, 2009 -- Jonathan Aberman, Managing Director of Amplifier Venture Partners, today released "The Decline of the United States Venture Capital Industry: What the Federal Government Should Do About It." The White Paper discusses the current problems and challenges to the private venture capital model and offers specific policy recommendations to the Federal Government to address these challenges.

In the White Paper, Mr. Aberman argues that addressing the shrinkage of the private venture capital industry and the loss of countless experienced company builders is a matter of urgent national economic policy. The venture capital industry is becoming configured to make larger investments in less innovative companies, as it is driven towards making less risky investments to satisfy the current investment preferences of its institutional investors. As the venture capital industry is moving away from more speculative investments, particularly early stage investments and investments in emerging technologies, the United States economy is losing a primary driver of technology commercialization.

Six years ago, the biggest thing Danish toy-maker Lego had constructed was a pile of debt. The family business, whose name comes from the Danish for “play well” was doing anything but — it was innovating, but its new products were underperforming.

Lego’s founding family appointed former McKinseyite Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who has brought the company back into the black with a systematic, sometimes painful change programme begun in in 2004.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is best known for its work combating malaria, AIDS and other diseases.

But the world’s richest charitable foundation has been quietly expanding into other problems of the developing world and this week announced an effort to bring banking, including savings accounts, to the poor, The Associated Press said.

Prepared Remarks of Chairman Julius Genachowski

The Brookings Institution, Washington DC September 21, 2009

I’d like to thank Brookings for hosting me and this discussion about the future of broadband and the Internet.

We’ve just finished a summer of big-ticket commemorations, celebrating the 40th anniversaries of the Apollo landing and of Woodstock; 1969 was also a good year to be a kid in New York, with Joe Namath calling the Super Bowl, and the Knicks’ season that ended with the legendary Willis Reed in Game 7. I grew up a long fly ball from Shea Stadium and soaked up every minute of the Miracle Mets’ season. Maybe that’s why I tend to believe in miracles.

TROY, N.Y., Sept. 21 -- President Obama called Monday for "a new generation of innovation" as he outlined a strategy to build on more than $100 billion in economic stimulus funding to promote progress in such areas as clean energy, health care and basic research.

"As we emerge from this current economic crisis, our great challenge will be to ensure that we don't just drift into the future," Obama said in a speech at Hudson Valley Community College. He said his strategy was aimed at building an economy better equipped to compete internationally, avoid cycles of boom and bust and create "the jobs of the future."

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The R&D Credit Coalition applauds President Obama for his speech made today at an upstate New York community college where he outlined his broader innovation strategy and how the government can play an important role in bolstering the U.S. economy through supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.

The following statement can be attributed to the R&D Credit Coalition:

"America has a strong innovation economy, but as we head into the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh this week, there are signs that our great country risks falling behind other developed nations. For America to lead the world in a global economic revitalization, our leaders must renew their commitment to supporting innovation through research and development.

Last week, I [Johnathan Ortmans] participated in the NASVF Annual Conference in Oklahoma City where experts discussed again how to ensure that credit crunches do not negatively impact start-up performance. The good news is that those gathering at this conference started from a common appreciation that entrepreneurship cannot be on the sidelines of economic and financial policy. Breakfast speaker Rick Wade, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Commerce, noted rigorous research at the Kauffman Foundation that revealed that entrepreneurs drive job creation in the U.S. with firms less than five years old accounting for all net job growth in the U.S. Moreover, job creation from startups is much less sensitive to downturns than job creation in the entire economy, according to research by Kauffman’s Dane Stangler. This may seem counterintuitive. However, this does not mean that entrepreneurs do not respond to business cycles. As Stangler points out, "a downturn might actually act as an extra spur to founding a new company, if the founders perceive that their prospective competition might be weakened." Others see starting a company amid a recession as a way to take their future into their own hands. Perhaps a major economic restructuring actually produces a lot of new unexpected opportunities. What is clearly understood is that entrepreneurs steadily recreate the economy, generating jobs and innovation.

Sep. 20--If it wasn't for an enduring image as the "Smoky City" -- so dubbed by muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair -- Pittsburgh might never have become a center for environmental innovation.

"I think there was a recognition, even in the pre-World War II period, that the city wasn't livable," said Anne Madarasz, director of the museum division at the Senator John Heinz History Center. "It wasn't attractive and, were the steel industry to decline -- and there were some indications it might, even then -- we needed to invest in the city to attract people to live here and businesses to locate here."

TiEcon Delhi 2009,(www.tiecon-delhi.org) one of India’slargest entrepreneurship conference commenced at The Taj Palace, New Delhitoday. The conference was kicked off with a welcoming note by Dr. SaurabhSrivastava Chairman Emeritus, The Indus Entrepreneurs, (TiE), New Delhi followedby an inaugural address by Mr. P. Chidambaram, HomeMinister, Ministry of Home Affairs. Mr P. Chidambaram’s address was followed byan address by Sir Richard Stagg, KMCG, British High Commissioner. The speakersaddressed a delegation of 1000 people attending this session. TiEcon Delhi 2009is a landmarkconference which brings together an array of people from a variety of industriesand societies to debate complex issues and foster new ideas.

Reporting from Menlo Park, Calif. - In what would have been an unaccustomed move for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist not too long ago, Alan Salzman recently flew to Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change and schmooze government policymakers.

His mission: Explain the role of venture capitalists and their green-tech start-ups in cleaning up the environment.

"All aspects of clean tech bump up against government regulations," said Salzman, whose firm, VantagePoint Venture Partners, has funded such high-profile firms as electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. and solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy Inc.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Silicon Valley companies that are debating whether it’s beneficial to work with telecom carriers should recalibrate their expectations in the time it will take to get the service to market, but hold onto the fact that the benefits of scale with operators are huge, said Derek Kerton. Kerton, principal analyst at the Kerton Group, helped organize this week’s TC3, an annual day-long event that connects telecom carriers and applications developers to share best practices in the Silicon Valley.

“Set your watch to telco time,” Kerton told the audience. The development cycle at a carrier can take 18 months, which is long by Silicon Valley standards. But the potential to reach mass scale is immediate: the world’s 20 largest carriers hold 57% of the market, Kerton said, citing Wireless Intelligence data. About 350 telecom companies have a presence in the Silicon Valley, he estimated, employing 200,000 people in the area.

Back in 1986, when Bill Gates was still making sales calls, he pitched my group at First Boston on why we should bet the farm on Windows. Despite the risk involved, we gave his fledgling startup the deal. This wasn’t because of his financial backers (he didn’t even drop any names), but because we believed in his vision and nerdiness. In the same way, Google became a huge success long before the deep pocketed VC’s arrived to ride Larry and Sergey’s coattails. They simply had a great technology and winning strategy.

So I’m miffed by the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) claim that companies like Microsoft and Google “…would not exist today without the funding and guidance provided during their early stages by venture capitalists.” And I’m amused that the NVCA claims credit for creating 12 million jobs and generating $3 trillion in revenue (that’s only 21 percent of U.S. GDP). In the software industry (which includes Internet/Web 2.0), they stake claim to 81% of the all jobs created. Yes, 81%. Can they please give the entrepreneurs who risk their life savings, max out their credit cards and put their families in the back seat a little more credit? We’re not talking about divvying up the company’s stock here, just a pat on the back.

A 3-year-old boy was recently diagnosed with a rare, aggressive, soft-tissue cancer in his bladder. Radiation treatment would have stunted the growth of his pelvic bones, hips and bladder and left him disabled. Radical surgery could remove his bladder, prostate and portions of his rectum. That would have left him impotent, using a colostomy bag, and urinating through another bag in his abdomen.

His parents chose a third option—a new "unproven" therapy where a proton beam precisely targeted the radiation dose so that it didn't cripple their son for life. The boy is now cancer-free and his body functions normally.

I've invented another theorem or "law" of innovation, which suggests that the speed of innovation is inversely proportional to the kinds of innovations you create. If your team creates incremental innovations, then the pace of innovation must be high, and the pipeline kept full. If your team creates disruptive innovations, then the pace can be much slower, with perhaps fewer ideas in the pipeline. This is predicated on a number of assumptions: