Report Sets Agenda for Fostering Innovation

by Terry Costlow

As the global economy presents new challenges to America’s high-tech leadership, governmental policy-makers will play an important role in setting the stage for success or failure. A recently released report, the National Innovation Initiative (NII), is tackling these issues in hopes of helping set an agenda that will help the country maintain its leadership position.

The NII goes beyond stating the obvious that countries with innovative companies and entrepreneurs will win out, focusing instead on creating an agenda for maintaining America’s leadership position. That agenda will require cooperation from legislators, educators and engineers throughout American industry. Implementing a focused strategy is critical for the United States to remain competitive as the Internet and other technologies heighten the already intense global competition.

“There are a lot of challenges facing this country, particularly competition from low-cost, high-innovation nations,” said Chad Evans, vice president of the Council on Competitiveness.

The Council was formed in 1986 “to set an action agenda that drives economic growth and raises the standard of living for all Americans.” Toward that end, it regularly benchmarks America’s economic competitive status compared to other countries while also supporting investment in knowledge creation and innovation. One of the group’s goals is to explain technical and business issues to legislators who help set the national agenda.

“We need to make sure policy-makers understand the value of engineering. We don’t just need MBAs, we need engineers to make sure we capture the global benefits as nanotechnology diffuses globally,” Evans said.

The Council is now starting to build its consensus by holding seminars to broaden awareness, working closely with the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Academy of Sciences and IEEE-USA, among others.

The NII proposes a three-pronged agenda. The "talent" segment calls for a national innovation education strategy and empowerment of American workers so they can succeed in the global economy.

The second agenda item calls for investment in advanced research and risk-taking companies, while also focusing on energizing the entrepreneurial economy. And the third goal focuses on infrastructure items that must be addressed, including strengthening America’s manufacturing capabilities while building a national consensus for innovation growth strategies.

The NII addresses many of the issues facing the electronics industry and electronic engineers. “Our goals align with the NII. We want to empower workers to succeed with things like portable health care benefits and expanded assistance to key industries,” said Russell Lefevre, vice president of Technology Policy Activities at IEEE-USA.

Government assistance to key areas such as electronics and nanotechnology is one of the key points of the voluminous report. These fields need plenty of long-term research, something that’s been neglected as corporations focus on product-oriented R&D necessary in hotly competitive markets. Government funding is available, but the independent-minded electronics industry hasn’t fought for it like some other fields.

“The report puts a lot of focus on research funding, making the case for a more balanced portfolio. It’s been skewed towards life sciences for the past decade,” Evans said. Federal funding for traditional disciplines such as electronics “have flatlined” in recent years, he added.

More Than Money

Making sure that there are well-trained engineers ready to use this funding is perhaps as important as getting cash. The study underscores a concern that’s been at the forefront of many planning discussions over the past few years.

“One of the points is that the United States needs to ensure that it has a healthy labor market for engineers,” said Ron Hira, chair of the IEEE-USA’s R&D Policy Committee.

Looking forward, there must be more of a focus on getting people to come up with new ideas, before pushing them into production. That means balancing between business and marketing types and engineer developers who put them into practice. The key is to focus on creativity.

“We need to educate innovators, and many of them need to be engineers,” Evans said.

This educational thrust will range from kindergarten through college, beginning with grade school programs that stimulate creative thinking and innovation skills.

At the university level, the NII’s education strategy calls for establishing tax-deductible scholarships funded by the private sector, as well as creating 5,000 portable graduate fellowships funded by federal R&D agencies. An agenda item that might stir up some controversy is a proposal to “reform immigration to attract the best and brightest scientific and engineering students from around the world.” These foreign graduates would then be granted U.S. work permits to retain that immeasurable intellectual capital here in the United States.

While recruiting foreign students has many potential benefits, it also holds some concern for U.S. engineers. Many engineers and engineering groups feel that H-1B immigrants coming to the United States have held down wages and contributed to increased unemployment among American engineers, who are also concerned with the increase in offshoring of professional jobs.

Such concerns have already prompted a call for new ways to measure the success of any efforts arising from the NII. One way to measure success would be to monitor U.S. companies involved in key technology areas, but, as critics point out, that might not be a good indicator of vitality in the engineering and scientific fields.

“We can’t just look at whether U.S. companies are succeeding. They may be succeeding with foreign workers,” Hira said.

Evans is optimistic that engineers have a bright future. And though there are numerous competitive issues facing the country, many of the report’s creators feel that American policy-makers, educators and engineers will rise to those challenges.

Terry Costlow has been writing about engineering issues for more than 20 years. He can be reached at todaysengineer@ieee.org.