Was the recent era THAT bad in terms of innovation? Will the next be different?
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 3:15AM FEATURE: "Innovation Interrupted: During the last decade, U.S. innovation has failed to realize its promise--and that may help explain America's economic woes," by Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, 15 June 2009.
ALMOST ON THE NEXT FRICKIN' PAGE IN THE SAME ISSUE!!: "Cloud Computing's Big Bag For Business," by Steve Hamm, BusinessWeek, 15 June 2009.
First piece with a good but depressing list of "disappointments," to include: cancer treatments, cloning, fuel-cell-powered cars, gene therapy, improved drug development, miniaturized silicon-based machines, satellite-based internet, speech technology and tissue engineering.
You can't blame the bulk of those disappointments on the cheap dollar or cheap gas (like you can with the fuel-cell-powered cars).
The argument here is that, outside of high-profile IT advances, innovation in the U.S. has really lagged in the last decade.
A lot of the problems, we are told, had to do with commercialization, meaning turning the technology into products that people wanted to buy.
A big clue on this failure: we now import more high-tech than we sell abroad, something that wasn't the case in the late 1990s. College-degree earners' wages have also not risen as one would expect in a great period of innovation, nor have death rates improved much--despite all the money spent on health care.
None of these indicators are perfect captures, but they all tell us something worth hearing, says the article: we are not maintaining our edge--by any stretch of the imagination.
Still, on almost the very next page, we're told that cloud computing, seemingly pushed by American innovation, will become the next big thing (shifting us from a network-centric paradigm to one centered on people and information). Then again, we're still talking that same narrow IT sector.
We shall see . . .
Reader Comments (2)
Take Electronics, while we don't yet, have paper thin organic Television displays, or your PC is in your phone instead of still being a "Laptop", there have been quantum leaps in those fields as well.
Being a Geezer, I'm always astounded at the progress of technology, and while it seems as though sometimes that technology is dragging it's feet . . most Americans (and the rest of the world as well) would not accept the leaps that seem to disappoint Mr. Mandel for not happening.
E.G. In the 50's the "Jelly Bean" Car was often projected as "Tomorrow's Car" . . and even then, the technology for the rudimentary vehicle was there . . What wasn't there was the Buyer . . that took another 50 years to find . . Nobody wanted one then, and based upon the sales of the Mustang, the Challenger and the Camaro, they still don't if given options . .
But perhaps you're onto a greater point. As an electrical engineer, I have a front seat on the globalization of technology. LCDs, cellular telephony, PCs, photovoltaic/solar cells, diesel engines, heck, electronics in general are all industries in which the US doesn't have technological leadership in.
Where is the basic research being done? Especially the big industrial labs. Consider, Bell Labs, which just won another Nobel prize. Where is the next Bell Labs?
As for the people: I can tell you many bright scientists and engineers were sucked into Wall Street. Many others left the field as outsourcing and offshoring kept wages stagnant and jobs scarcer. From the other end, R&D budgets were cut to boost short term profits, executive bonuses and Wall Street profits.
And the best and brightest no longer need to, or even want to work in here, the USA, anymore.