ALERT: Americans to Secede from Humanity

This just in:

After three or four centuries during which citizens of the United States partook in that great narrative of innovation known as human civilization, Americans have suddenly stopped innovating. Biologists and anthropologists, anachronistically noting that innovation is a defining human characteristic, have duly concluded that Americans have thus effectively ceased to be human.

What are the causes of this crisis, in which the United States' "position is slipping" relative to the rest of the world? Laziness? Ignorance? Short-sightedness? Dastardly foreigners stealing our humanity? Yes, yes, yes, and yes!

The propensity to panic, of course, is as innate as the creative impulse. Two observations:

Am I naive to observe that many of those calling for a government-led national innovation strategy are--sometimes, not always--the very people who would benefit from, say, increased R&D funding or a more central role for venture capital?

It is striking that most of the recommendations for spurring American innovation, while claiming to be future-oriented, actually look backward. Imagine if, in the wake of World War Two, the U.S. had decided that future prosperity depended not on federal R&D funding, but a greater stress on prewar research modes, mostly privately funded. Or if, in the 1980s and 1990s, we had collectively decided that large corporate research labs were our only hope--forget start-ups, forget university spin-offs, forget entrepreneurs not dependent on R&D. Likewise today: is it really that clear that a return to prior modes of innovation--more federal basic research money, more venture capital--is the only way for us to innovate? (One of the biggest changes in the nature of innovation often seems to pass unremarked: the end of the Cold War. The Cold War was a huge spur to government (defense) research as well as large numbers of students majoring in engineering.)

I'm not saying that the long-term prospects for the U.S. economy are in tip-top shape, or that our innovation ecosystem lacks room for improvement. (Marc Andreessen makes a compelling case that innovation is "alive and well.") But, given the continuing shift of the American economy into knowledge-intensive services (not well captured by traditional measures of innovation), the rising importance of social production, and the more nebulous (and numerous) pathways of innovation outside VC and R&D, the panic seems overblown.

Comments

[Michael F. Martin]

The panic is overblown because the U.S. (compared to other nations) still has the best universities in the world.

The panic is not overblown because the new science and engineering done at these universities has not been flowing out to entrepreneurs as efficiently as it did immediately after World War II.

We have a great system in place to make this happen in a decentralized way. Only a few, relatively minor tweaks need to be made to get the pipeline flowing freely again.

Everybody knows there is a gap in proof-of-concept funding. There are no private investors with time horizons long enough to bridge the gap from R&D at universities to VC work. And VCs (especially now) are not interested in taking on more risk.

What we need is a public-private collaboration between universities and private equity that will reopen the pipeline.

And here's a safe prediction: If that pipeline does reopen, there won't be twenty different teams pitching the same business plan at the same time anymore. There will be twenty different teams with twenty different business plans.

[TomT]

I work in a research area of the US Government. 70 to 80% of the research is wasted and politically motivated. Give it back to the private sector. We will all be more wealthier. The Military is a different focus. That is why we give the government a monopoly on force.