Can open innovation work at the national government level in America?
With the American political season in high gear, what, if any contribution do you think open innovation can make to the policies of the next administration?
John McCain has proposed a $300 million prize for the development of a better car battery as part of his energy policy. Barack Obama spoke with ScienceDebate2008 about his technology and science innovation plan in an interview just published on the Wired Blog today.
Do you think open innovation or prize-based innovation would work on a government level? If you could suggest an issue or problem that could be solved with open innovation to either candidate, what would it be?
Tags: $300 million, Innovation, mccain, obama, politics, prize, science, technolgoy
September 10th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I think the government should supply solar panels to every home owner for free. They should also replace (for free) all appliances more than 10 years old with energy efficient models that are manufactured at plants in locations spread out evenly thru out the United States for more efficient shipping and to generate manufacturing jobs. Old appliances could then be re-cycled into the new ones saving space in the land fills. They should also mine for oil, coal and natural gas with “mini” portable refineries set up on old rail road lines that would refine the oil into gas and ship it to locations close to the mine sites. This would create jobs and make the production of energy less costly. The government should also set up wind farms in the desert to supply wind energy to communities that need it. This would be a good incentive to the citizens of the United States of America, new appliances, cheap energy, and better economy.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I think government can use incentives and bully pulpit to point to innovative ways public and private sector organizations can work together to solve probems. For instance, web technology now is enabling many people to map data. Poverty maps can show all areas of the country with high poverty, while concept maps can serve as blueprints to show actions that can be taken in many places, at the right time, to help a youth go from birth to first job.
Maps can be used to guild the distribution of resources and to hold elected and private sector leaders accountable for distribution of resoruces (volunteers, ideas, dollars, etc.) to more of the places where a problem persists, and for a longer period of time.
Visit ttp://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/ for examples of maps that could be used by hospitals, colleges, poliltical leaders, and faith leaders to focus member attention and resources on places with high poverty, poor schools and other behaviors that are a high cost to society, and to individuals.
If government uses its recouces to encourage the development and management of tools like this, and to support collaborative innovation to develop better operating systems, it can use existing resources more effectively, and can reduce the costs of government by increasing the responsibility that individual citizens take. One measure would be to find the “volunteer” and “donate” buttons on the Obama or McCain web sites point to maps of communities where people who they influence can volunteer time, talent and dollars.
Instead of doing this as a random act of leadership, such as after the Gustav event, this should be happening every day.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
The government is good at creating laws; that’s what the legislative branch does. But it is not adept at managing projects. It is much too large of a bureaucracy to manage projects efficiently. Karen’s plan would Nationalize many industries in a plan to have the government “take care” of us. We need less government interference. Government works best when it encourages innovation in the right direction, and lets the market innovate on its own. The best ideas always win out in a market driven competition.
A more effective plan would be to legislate limits on oil usage for certain products, with penalties for going over those limits. Legislate that cars must get a minimum number of miles for each gallon of oil used. Cars that derive part or all of their energy from alternative sources will meet the requirements autmatically, and cars that guzzle gas will pay penalties. Fuel efficent cars would meet the limits and not pay penalties. People vote with their pocket book. The desire to save money drives innovation, but innovation is best left to individuals and companies who see a financial benefit in developing new technologies.
Limits could be placed on industries, home owners and others. Don’t limit energy usage - limit the amount of energy that can be derived from oil. Alternatives will then become financially attractive and automatically drive innovation.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Can open innovation work at the national government level in America?
Yes, if adequate feedback and coordination between people and groups is provided.
Let’s say I have a good idea but Bob has a better one. How do I know? One way is to have
a hierarchy of interaction where ideas are judge by peers and the best are passed up to the
next level. But this gives too much power to the top levels. Perhaps a network “graph” is better
but how is that coordinated and where do the ideas end up? If my idea is superseded by Bob
then I should be able to refine Bob’s or Alice’s ideas further. How is this done? This blog is a vehical
for dissemination but where does this information end up? Does this go anywhere beyond the typing
of these words? Who coordinates? Who disseminates? Who judges?
September 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Queston for the Presidential candidates:
How can we bring some balance between funding of the physical and the social sciences? It is understandable that the physical sciences are favorites for funders, because they have been obviously successful in solving problems. By the same token, the social, political and psychological sciences are not as heavily funded because they have been relatively unsuccessful.
Yes the most urgent problems we are facing have to do with the social and political. We are expending vast amounts of effort, lives and money on security in Iraq and Afganistan, anit-terrorism, etc. Yet the basic threat to our security cannot be met in this way. Because of technological advances, invisibily small groups can easily sicken or kill vast numbers of people. New systems of communication and governance are needed that could arbitrate the most intense risks. What steps would be necessary to raise funding in these areas?
September 10th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Queston for the Presidential candidates:
How can we bring some balance between funding of the physical and the social sciences? It is understandable that the physical sciences are favorites for funders, because they have been obviously successful in solving problems. By the same token, the social, political and psychological sciences are not as heavily funded because they have been relatively unsuccessful.
Yet the most urgent problems we are facing have to do with the social and political. We are expending vast amounts of effort, lives and money on security in Iraq and Afganistan, anit-terrorism, etc. Yet the basic threat to our security cannot be met in this way. Because of technological advances, invisibily small groups can easily sicken or kill vast numbers of people. New systems of communication and governance are needed that could arbitrate the most intense risks. What steps would be necessary to raise funding in these areas?
September 10th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
The government is the wrong place to look for most of the aforementioned issues. They have never and will not put up taxpayers capital on risk enterprizes. The people missing from this disscussion are the CEOs of large companies. These have traditionaly been the movers and shakers of the kind of projects needed. Many of them are, like Mr Pickens with the wind farms. The problem is that the old energy companies are loathe to put up serious capital for a meaningfull and focused solution. They’re no longer tied to any given nation and don’t feel they need to get involved with any one nations problems, It’s been said that the piecemeal progress of individuals and communities can accomplish energy independence. I doubt this is true when one considers the vast scale of industry in this country. Only one entity can accomplish this - BIG OIL.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I think it is very important that the voting process is protected, counting every person’s vote, Republican, Democrats…everyone! This means there must be a way to verify that voting results are accurate and that everyone is guaranteed his or her vote. The fundamental right of democracy, the right to vote, should never be tampered with, compromised, or become suspect. The vote is a unique possession, a great equalizer. Everyone, rich and poor, gets only one vote, and that one must be counted fairly with a system that is dependable and accurate.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Where is the government going to get $300,000,000? We are in debt up to our eyeballs already! How does McCain see the US getting this back?
September 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Governments generally are rule bound and not innovation oriented. Howeve innovation can improve government services. It will work in forward looking democratic societies like Western Europe and North America.
Key areas like water supply, energy management, pollution control, health services have a wide scope for improvment.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
The super battery is a good idea, but converting cars to natural gas is the best way to cheaply reduce foreign oil. (Boone Pickens idea) The next best step is to offer a reward for a natural gas fuel cell, which would be great for the environment and the pocket book (Cars run on electricity only)……….Joe Portman, Retired Science Consultant……..
September 10th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Open innovation can work anywhere as long as the mechanisms are in place for it to work. The biggest issue with innovation in many cases is mechanisms to enable the innovation to become reality (where that is feasible). Throwing $300 mil at an inventor can be useful if the R&D for the invention will likely cost a lot, such as in this case: it should always be enough of an incentive to provoke anyone who could have a good idea to come forward with it. In most cases however, particularly where R&D would not be costly, a cool million would probably be enough, provided it were tax-free.
In terms of innovations that should be solved as soon as possible, they are right now mostly energy-related. Cheaper energy from more varied, and more renewable sources is urgently required, both to improve the economies of most countries in the world, and to make life cheaper in third-world countries, where people at the bottom of the heap suffer disproportionally from higher energy costs trickling through in the increased costs of almost everything. In my inventions blog at http://itimes3.wordpress.com I have published many energy-related innovations, but we need a lot more people doing a lot more - we can publish inventions like I do, but those with the spare cash to make them reality also need to jump into the fray.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Yes, I do think open innovation would work in terms of generating ideas for solving problems. I don’t think politicians necessarily are the best pick for selecting the best ideas to pursue or executing on ideas that should be pursued. What would make sense for these steps would be for industry/subject matter experts to work on these parts of innovating. For instance, crowd sourcing for ideas to come up with ideas on how to solve the social security issue or improving the American education system would be great. Then pull a smaller team of folks together to evaluate the resulting list of ideas to do the next level of research on which ideas are the most promising. The biggest problem politicians have is they are “firefighters” not strategic planners. They are quick to jump on to an urgent issue, but are not good at foreseeing problems and being able to rally together to head off a crisis (like global warming). I would suggest Obama and McCain consider engaging companies like Ideo for advice on how innovation could be worked into the political process without it becoming a disruptive, money wasting process like war is.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:14 am
My suggestions for new Govt. are:-
1.Create more jobs so that many unemployed persons can get their Bread, Clothing and homes. This can only be done by corporates and other businessmen not by Govt. It can formulate policies for creating new jobs. New jobs will create more purchasing power and there will be more demand for consumer goods. Which in turn will keeps wheels of indusries rolling. Sub prime loans problem also can be solved if families are able to earn more due to incresed employment oppurtunities. This in turn resolve problem of banks who have lost billions of dollars.
2.U.S has become victim of its own policy of Free Trade as China has grabed large chunk of market share of consumer goods resulting in closures of many industries and job losses. Some rethinking is required regarding this policy of Free Trade.
3. Govt. should stop wastefull expenses of fighting wars in other countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. It is eating away national exchequer and loosing of young lives. There should be policy change to meet dangers from hostile countries.
4. U.S has vast resources of agriclutral land and forests it should exploit these resources fully. If needed farmers from other countries should be allowed to work in the agriclutral sectors, it will also generate demand for consumer goods which will be required by these farmers.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Thanks one and all for a lively debate! Let’s keep up the discussion. It is our hope at InnoCentive that local and national government agencies will begin to look at open innovation as a way to solve some of the biggest problems our country faces right now. Stay tuned for developments on that front!
September 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I think we have many problems. Making government work effectively and efficiently is high on my list but I do not think the problem is lack of ideas. Rather it is lack of interest and concern with mundane matters.
For innovation, I think there is a real lack of understanding of what would be practical and cost effective. Much greaster dialogue and feedback and dissenination of factual information about many of the existing ideas would be required to choose the relatively few ideas which deserve support.
I do not want to be negative, but I suspect that Karen’s idea of mini-oilrefineries on railway lines is impractical. Seems similar to Chairman Mao’s idea of an iron blast furnace in every Chinese village.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:50 am
The quickest way to solve our technological problems would be to appoint a civilian board to declassify military secrets. The military already has all the technology to solve every conceivable energy and transportation problem. It is so good, they don’t want our enemies to get it. This is short-sighted, as our whole world is at stake. Did you know that there are at least 30 levels of secrecy beyond the President of the United States? We need laws to give the civilian government especially the presidential cabinet access to all levels of the military. Our so-called leaders don’t have a clue as to what is available.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I would like to see Innocentive used for government and military problem..
One problem that could be tackled is illegal immigration, another is fighting crime including drug abuse, another problem is providing cost effective new technologies for America’s military defense and yet another problem is how to combat corruption. There are many more problems. Of course, the problems need to be well defined and made more specific.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
[...] of you wrote in response to my question last week, Can innovation work at the National Government level in America? I want to thank you for your thoughtful feedback, it’s fantastic to see such a lively [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Excellent blog! Interesting article and very informative! I will necessarily subscribe for this blog. http://onlineoneru.ru/map.html
November 12th, 2008 at 6:23 am
It is not out-of-date information? Because I have other data on this theme. http://hotsalego.com/map.html