The ongoing sagas of the stimulus bill and financial bailout are, understandably, dominating headlines and online chatter. In no way do I intend to belittle the severity of the current recession and the overall gravity of the situation but, if history is any guide, these policy debates run in parallel to a bizarro world in which a separate economic future is developing.
In this bizarro world, the high-growth companies of tomorrow are just coming into existence, and innovations we cannot even imagine are in their infancy. A few years ago in the American Economic Review, economist Alexander Field declared the 1930s to be "the most technologically progressive of any comparable period in U.S. economic history."
In the bizarro spirit, then, I spent part of the morning canvassing what I like to think of as the frontiers of economic growth--the spaces where our future is being made right now. The stimulus and bailout matter to these frontiers, of course, but it's important to note that the as-yet-imagined future is materializing without word from Washington or Wall Street or anywhere else.
This is just awesome.
Stem cells are key.
The stimulus is apparently directed toward "shovel-ready" projects, but instead of shovels, what about nano-particles?
And this just sounds crazy, but still awesome.
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