Can America Invent It’s Way Back?
Many 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 debate!
Over the weekend, Business Week published an article on a similar topic, entitled Can America Invent Its Way Back? They delved into what they term innovation economics, and the reasons that innovation could soon become essential in our economy. They also published a video interview with, Michael Mandel, who is the Chief Economist for Business Week.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this piece and the topic of innovation economics. Will innovation, particularly open innovation, keep America competetive? I’m particularly interested to hear from those of you who live outside the US on this one. How much has open innovation (or crowdsourcing) caught on where you live?
Tags: america, business week, government, Innovation, invent
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
The current financial system has reached the limits of it’s effectiveness. Interest on debt has exceeded the system’s ability to pay it off. But debt is simply a promisory note on future productivity – any caveman can tell us that the only way to increase productivity today is to innovate yesterday, not tomorrow.
In modern times, this means that the only way to sustainably create more money tomorrow is to innovate today. This is the tiny little flaw of Wall Street that Innovation Economics will correct.
http://www.ingenesist.com discribes a few simple web applications that will allow human knowledge to become tangible outside of the organizational construct of a corporation, government, or even academia. Whoever developes these applications will generate a great deal of wealth.
These applications are as follows:
1. The knowledge Inventory
2. The Percentile Search Engine
3. The Innovation Bank
Believe it or not, human knowledge would make a wonderfully tangible asset upon which to peg a currency – better than Gold, Silver, Oil, or Debt.
While this may mot seem like a much, the reality is that everything changes. Many of our most durable paradigms will be challenged and millions of new business models will be created while nearly every existing business will be made more efficient. Wall street will be transformed from master to steward.