Silicon Valley Innovation

It is interesting to note PBS’ recent segment on the demise of Silicon Valley (read Palo Alto) and its reflection on the general state of Innovation in the US (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/north_america/jan-june10/siliconvalley_04-05.html) .

Many of the issues PBS identified with the state of US innovation were outlined six years ago in the National Innovation Initiative, sponsored by the President’s Council on Competitiveness (http://www.compete.org/about-us/initiatives/nii). It seems we are not acting in ways that will increase our ability to compete on innovation.
One key factor is the education of aspiring innovators in engineering, design and business. The statistics show we are graduating fewer such individuals, with more and more innovators coming from abroad. Another factor is the short term focus of America’s businesses. Often innovation requires multi year commitment which is counter to nurturing big innovation. A third factor are the tax incentives that send many innovation jobs offshore.

It would seem that in this period of economic uncertainty we would address our innovation needs, but, to the contrary, I looks like we are setup to take the easier way out, which will lead to long term failure.

In the next few entries I am going to address some of these issues with examples of what companies and other nations are doing to address their innovation and business growth requirements.