Full Title: 25 Recommendations for the Reauthorization of the 2013 America COMPETES Act
Author(s): Stephen J. Ezell and Robert D. Atkinson
Publisher(s): The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The America COMPETES Act, originally enacted in 2007 and reauthorized in 2010, has helped support the science, technology, and innovation enterprise that underpins U.S. economic growth. The impending 2013 Reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act affords an opportunity to introduce new or extend effective existing programs and initiatives related to: innovation and technology commercialization; federal institutional reforms to spur innovation; and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.
The paradigm that defined the U.S. science, technology, and innovation system in the post-World War II era is simply no longer tenable. That approach was predicated on a “linear model” of innovation that pumped seemingly limitless funding for basic research into U.S. universities and government labs on the front-end with the expectation that industry virtually alone would conduct the applied and translational work needed to transform basic research into technologies and products that could be commercialized (and manufactured at scale in the United States) on the back-end. That approach also viewed all scientific research as equal and didn’t prioritize scientific research funding based on its ability or likelihood to help support U.S. economic competitiveness, which was taken as a given. While this model worked for a time—when many fewer other nations had the technological capabilities to translate basic research into commercial products—it’s ill- suited to today’s intensely competitive global economy. A new approach is needed to transform the U.S. innovation system, and it should embrace four key principles:
- Increasing funding is not enough; institutional reform is also needed
- The prevailing linear innovation approach is ineffective and incomplete
- The belief that if all policy does is fund basic research that commercialization will naturally come out the other end of the pipeline assumes that there are no barriers or problems
- Not all scientific research funding is created equal
- Certain research programs are much more important to our country’s economic
well-being and competitiveness than others - Not all students are likely to become scientists or engineers