European Innovation.

If you wish to know why you do not want a society like Europe, take a look at the attached article on Innovation in Europe and America. 


Europe stagnates. 


America still innovates. 


But Europe could happen to us.



http://www.economist.com/node/21559618?fsrc=nlw%7Chig%7C7-26-2012%7C2899296%7C37582838%7C

Innovation. Apple or Samsung?

In a suit headed to trial next week, Apple will ask for $2.5 billion on claims that Samsung copied features of the iPad and iPhone in some of its Galaxy products. 

The thought of these two corporate gladiators clashing in a legal coliseum, and Apple with more than $100 billion in cash, is enough to make innovators reluctant to innovate. Either gladiator could crush a business with legal briefs.  Never forget the nominal price of innovation must include the phenomenal price to protect it. 

My view is that this litigation is not so much about iPhones or iPads, it is about TVs. Apple wants into the TV market, dominated by Samsung, and wants Samsung to let them in without litigation. 

Apple and Samsung will ultimately split the smartphone market and the TV market too.

Watch for this litigation to be settled about the same time Apple starts selling TVs.

Needed. A Big Harry Audacious Goal.

Innovation is usually sparked by a goal. 


Or at least by solving problems that prevent us from reaching a goal. Landing a person on the moon and bringing that person safely home in a decade was a goal that sparked innovation because there were so many problems that had to be solved to reach that goal. 


American innovation needs a Big Harry Audacious Goal. Cure Cancer. Feed the world, or at least America. A national wireless communication system that enables Internet access anywhere, anytime and by anyone. An online educational institution that brings the best teachers to a student in the most remote part of the world anytime of the day. Webcams that allow Americans to visit our national parks anytime of the day.


The goal should have a time element and be measurable - two critical components of a goal. 


Do you have a BHAG in mind? Please let me know.

Innovation is outdated.

Everyone is jumping on the innovation bandwagon. From government to the CEOs of major corporations, the new feel good management concept is innovation. Innovate or  die is the mantra of the elite. The road to riches is through the holy grail of disruptive innovation. Disrupt or be disrupted so the mantra goes.


Poppycock, I say. 


A Google search on innovation produces millions and millions of results. Everyone is writing about it, talking about it and testifying about it. I am only waiting for the POTUS candidates to make innovation a part of their political platform. In their case, innovation might take the form of debating the issues rather than debating out of context text.


And for the most part. The innovative innovation experts focus on technology innovation. However, the economy cries out for innovation in supplying food and shelter to those who need it. Innovation in providing food and housing is not as fascinating as a smartphone that knows where you are, knows what you want before you want it, pays for it when you have no money and sends it to you.


Real innovation for me is supplying food to the foodless and providing shelter to the shelterless at costs that decrease every year just like laptops. We need an innovative Moore's law that allows the farmer to supply twice as much food at half the cost every 5 years. We still make steaks the same way too. The same for housing. We could sure use some innovative financial tools to solve that problem.


We need to redirect innovation back to the basic parts of life. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, I can get along without my smartphone, but I still need food and shelter.

American Innovation and Education

The education system is defunct.

The teaching unions have caused large cracks in the American Innovation Machine. Teachers seldom get fired, and there is no correlation between producing good students and teacher compensation.  Our state representatives allocate millions of dollars to build state of the art educational buildings, then pay teachers less than a McDonalds manager. 

Our colleges pay athletic directors more than $1 million per year and our top math instructors less than $80,000. No other country has this situation. In many countries, great national prestige is accompanied with the title professor. In this country, the position is maligned with quotes like the “Professors live in an ivory tower”, or “Those that can do work, those that can not teach.” 

The teacher's union bear the full responsibility for a  decline in education in our schools.  A brand new teacher with no experience has a staring salary of $30,000 per year. A teacher with 30 years experience makes $48,000  per year, which represents and annual increase in salary of less than 1% per year. Bad teachers and good teachers make the same salary. Teachers who grade papers at home make the same salary as teachers who do not. The teaching unions while making great noise over accountability really have none and pay is based on time in place rather than the production of great student And here is the final rub. 

The unions in most states are so strong that a person with 20 years of mathematics experience in a business environment, of giving seminars on math to hundreds of people is barred from teaching math in high school because he/she does not have a teaching certificate. The teaching union is not unlike the unions of the 30’s and 40’s—they did a great job for awhile.

The teaching unions are a barrier to providing the best teachers for our students. When was the last time you heard someone say they wished to grow up to be a teacher. Even the TV shows about teachers depict most of the typical teacher’s day “ Babysitting” rather than teaching.

Innovation PARC Bell Labs

I have been thinking about innovation more than usual. Is it really an individual activity as we typically think, in the spirit of Steve Jobs or Edison?  Is the government responsible as Obama has been accused of believing? I have another non-partisan view.

There was a time when American had two great idea machines-Bell Labs and the Palo Alto Research Corporation, better known as PARC. Bell Labs was in the East and PARC was in the west. One or the other of these two genius factories were behind most every innovation I can imagine in the last 40 years. There are already some great books on the subject detailing the innovative products from these two marvelous innovation machines. From the Internet to Computers, it started in these places. Apple made the money from the graphical user interface, GUI as it is called, but the concept was developed at PARC.

PARC was funded by Xerox. Bell Labs was funded by the original, pre-split-up, Ma Bell company. The culture of innovation at these places has never been duplicated and they do not exist in their original form anymore.

And with their demise, American innovation is looking for another place to spawn.

Have some fun. Google PARC and Bell Labs.

American Innovation is Broken.

       Our founding fathers spawned a constitution that recognized and rewarded innovation. From the isolated plains of America, they gave birth to the great American innovation machine.  The machine has worked like the proverbial Swiss watch providing a seemingly timeless environment for the innovative capabilities of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Thomas Watson and Benjamin Franklin to name a popular few. The American innovation machine has created more jobs and wealth than the combined totals of 50 other countries of the world. For two hundred thirty years, it has kept the correct time. We could always depend on the American initiative. Every President has told us so. From the building of a vast transportation system which was the best in the world, from JFK inspiring us to go to the moon, it has worked. But just like the Swiss watch the innovation machine has been passed by. The machine is broken.

       The last 40 years have witnessed an unprecedented decline in American innovation, often explained by characterizing the decline as a natural expansion of the global economy. In retrospect the decline is indisputably visible, but along the way the decline has been camouflaged by many other public policy matters. Scientists have concluded that the grand canyon was created by water weathering away rock, the evidence is indisputable. However, I have stood on the Grand Canyon floor for several hours and never noticed any difference. The decline and fall of the great American innovation machine is just like that - imperceptible changes in foresight, but indisputable damage in hindsight. 

       The great American innovation machine is broken. We have regulated, cajoled and rationalized ourselves into innovation oblivion. We are in taxi-cab gridlock in New York City in Times Square at 5PM Friday afternoon trying to get home to Connecticut. We are moving, but we are not going anywhere, nor will we get there on time. And like the Swiss watch, innovation has passed us by so swiftly, so silently that we did not see the movement. 

       Follow this blog. And I will explain what needs to be done to fix it.

Innovation and America

Where have all the buffalo gone?

Wake up, get up, wise up, do something. If your eyes are open, then you have seen the results of the great American innovation machine. From cars to planes, trains to computers, vacuum cleaners to washing machines, microwave ovens to toys, from polio vaccines to band-aids--no one, but no one has gone untouched by the great American innovation machine. We used to make it all. We certainly thought up most of it. Thousands of books and hundreds of movies have chronicled the innovation machine for the last 50 years. World leaders have heralded our successes and labeled us the innovation giant.

       But wake up and wise up because it just ain’t so anymore. Like the Buffalo, the innovation machine has silently slipped into a myopic memory icon. We know the Buffalo were here we just do not know exactly what happened to them. Pick up the latest toy or electronic game and we don’t make it, we don’t even think it up. Somebody else does. And by the way more power to the innovators what ever country they live in. 

       The issue of the great broken innovation machine is not where the least expensive labor or materials are located, the issue is why we are not innovating things that create industries any more. Of course, the skeptics will all launch their anecdotal missile exceptions like Google or Microsoft, but keen observers will not be misdirected by this sleight of hand and adsorb the larger picture. McDonalds is one of our nations largest employers. So is the government. One out of every 10 people are employed by a local, state or federal government. The last time I checked the government does not make anything and innovation is not one of its skills either.

       But make no mistake about it the government’s role in the creation of the great American innovation machine is awesome and pervasive. Its role in breaking the machine is not without evidence also. But do not think for a moment that I am going to join the popular position that the government, whoever that is, is the real culprit because the last time we checked this situation too; we, that is you and I, elected these public officials ourselves. There is no corner to hide in and escape the blame.

It is up to us to reclaim the great American Innovation machine too.

American Innovation and Bayh-Dole Act

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act launched numerous technology commercialization programs at American universities.  According to the Association of University Technology Research, more than 225 universities receive approximately $30 billion in federal grants and receive more than $2 billion in royalties from more than 3,000 patents or other intellectual property licensing agreements. 

Unfortunately, despite this activity and setting aside academic arguments for basic research needs and indirect spin-off jobs in the private sector, a $2 billion return from a $30 billion tax payer investment is a ticket to bankruptcy by most corporate financial benchmarks.  Further, despite dramatic changes in the innovation landscape, there have been no significant modifications in the Bayh-Dole act in 30 years targeted at improving these results.

     Additional financial returns are “roadblocked” because there is no effective/efficient method for private sector businesses to match university research with business’s commercialization potential. For example, a business in Pocatello, Idaho has no way of knowing that a federally funded university research project at the University of Florida in Gainsville, Florida has developed a technology that matches the needs of the Pocatello, Idaho business’s needs. 
     A national research data base Internet accessible by small and large businesses would break this “roadblock” and release the full commercialization potential and intent of the Bayh-Dole Act. This initiative would solve several problems that currently face universities that are trying to commercialize technology. There have been several attempts to establish just such a network but no well funded national program has evolved.

    The Bayh-Dole Act should be amended and $100 million allocated to establish a comprehensive program to accelerate the commercialization of university technology. To do less is to keep sending $30 billion of taxpayer research into empty space.