America is Out of Ideas
Published in Les Echos
(France) on 15 September 2009
by Michel Ktitareff (link to original)
While America undergoes a particularly brutal crisis of mass unemployment, decline and the collapse of the housing market, one wonders with worry about the question of competitiveness. Why is it that the motor of exceptionally long and regular growth for three decades hasn't come up with anything to surpass its larger competitors?
More and more experts have become publicly alarmed by what today is considered America's obvious inability to innovate. This is all the more serious, as it would be the last step before a deep and lasting economic decline.
Pessimists aren't lacking evidence. Last Feburary, a report published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an influential Washington think tank, estimated according to 16 criteria measuring competitiveness that the United States no longer comes in at sixth. The U.S. is now far behind several countries of Northern Europe (most notably Sweden) and many in Asia (particularly Singapore), that collect the fruits of massive engagement, past and present, of their governments in favor of technological innovation.
Recently, an expert in analysis of American economic growth, Adrian Slywotzky, explained in "Business Week" that American economic dynamism was "already broken" by the failure to invest in scientific research. According to him, this crisis of innovation had already begun at the end of the 1990s. In order to convince others, he emphasizes the desertification of huge public research laboratories, those financed by the federal government, because the salaries of researchers were so unattractive that it discouraged the best students, and reflected the absence of the political will to support fundamental research.
Indeed, so many experts recognize that the American model of privately funding innovation remains one of the best in the world and that it's better to underline that non-implemented research is in decline. For example, Bell laboratories received six Nobel prizes last century and largely contributed to create the American telecommunications industry, but saw its size cut down ten years after its golden age. Ditto for the famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Silicon Valley, which invented the concept of the mouse and the laser printer practically by accident. The best example is perhaps the military laboratory of Darpa, created in order to compete with the Soviets in the space race in the 1950s; it also originated the concept of the internet. Without quality fundamental research, the television, the transistor radio and even the solar photovoltaic cell would never have seen the light of day in America.
Is pessimism justified? Certainly, some promises made by scientific Americans in recent years have not yet been realized, most notably in the biotechnology sector, where they still wait for miraculous treatments for cancer or Alzheimer's. Still, there is evidence to suggest that the new administration is conscious of the need to revive necessary research in order to restore the competitiveness of America. Hardly in power, Barack Obama financed a new agency, ARPA-E (E for energy), which has the mission of designing green technologies to do what Darpa did for information technology, militaristic or not.
IBM, Cisco, General Electric, Google or DuPont recall for themselves their own wishes for fundamental, specific research leading to lasting development, at the beginning of which they developed commercial applications.
But, even if a certain vision takes shape, another danger threatens America. Contrary to the last century, America is no longer attracting the best minds in the world. A recent study from the Kauffman Foundation indicates that 50,000 Asian immigrants have left the United States in the last two years, a movement that's only just begun. Worse is that 90 percent of those returning received advanced degrees and were attracted by the opportunities available elsewhere.
Well trained in American universities but broken by the lack of creation of innovative companies, some of those brilliant students could very well hatch the next Google of "clean tech" on the side of Shanghai, Singapore or Bombay.
More and more experts have become publicly alarmed by what today is considered America's obvious inability to innovate. This is all the more serious, as it would be the last step before a deep and lasting economic decline.
Pessimists aren't lacking evidence. Last Feburary, a report published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, an influential Washington think tank, estimated according to 16 criteria measuring competitiveness that the United States no longer comes in at sixth. The U.S. is now far behind several countries of Northern Europe (most notably Sweden) and many in Asia (particularly Singapore), that collect the fruits of massive engagement, past and present, of their governments in favor of technological innovation.
Recently, an expert in analysis of American economic growth, Adrian Slywotzky, explained in "Business Week" that American economic dynamism was "already broken" by the failure to invest in scientific research. According to him, this crisis of innovation had already begun at the end of the 1990s. In order to convince others, he emphasizes the desertification of huge public research laboratories, those financed by the federal government, because the salaries of researchers were so unattractive that it discouraged the best students, and reflected the absence of the political will to support fundamental research.
Indeed, so many experts recognize that the American model of privately funding innovation remains one of the best in the world and that it's better to underline that non-implemented research is in decline. For example, Bell laboratories received six Nobel prizes last century and largely contributed to create the American telecommunications industry, but saw its size cut down ten years after its golden age. Ditto for the famous Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Silicon Valley, which invented the concept of the mouse and the laser printer practically by accident. The best example is perhaps the military laboratory of Darpa, created in order to compete with the Soviets in the space race in the 1950s; it also originated the concept of the internet. Without quality fundamental research, the television, the transistor radio and even the solar photovoltaic cell would never have seen the light of day in America.
Is pessimism justified? Certainly, some promises made by scientific Americans in recent years have not yet been realized, most notably in the biotechnology sector, where they still wait for miraculous treatments for cancer or Alzheimer's. Still, there is evidence to suggest that the new administration is conscious of the need to revive necessary research in order to restore the competitiveness of America. Hardly in power, Barack Obama financed a new agency, ARPA-E (E for energy), which has the mission of designing green technologies to do what Darpa did for information technology, militaristic or not.
IBM, Cisco, General Electric, Google or DuPont recall for themselves their own wishes for fundamental, specific research leading to lasting development, at the beginning of which they developed commercial applications.
But, even if a certain vision takes shape, another danger threatens America. Contrary to the last century, America is no longer attracting the best minds in the world. A recent study from the Kauffman Foundation indicates that 50,000 Asian immigrants have left the United States in the last two years, a movement that's only just begun. Worse is that 90 percent of those returning received advanced degrees and were attracted by the opportunities available elsewhere.
Well trained in American universities but broken by the lack of creation of innovative companies, some of those brilliant students could very well hatch the next Google of "clean tech" on the side of Shanghai, Singapore or Bombay.