Editor | On 12, Nov 2007

Praveen Gupta

In 2005 US Congress passed the innovation act with the intent of increasing research investment, increasing science and technology talent, and developing an innovation infrastructure. The legislation required to establish the President’s Council on Innovation for promoting innovation in the public and private sectors. The council is supposed to develop metrics for assessing the existing and proposed laws affecting innovation in the United States.

Research investment implied establishing innovation acceleration grants program for allocating 3% of funds at the federal agencies for high-risk frontier research. It also meant to double the research funding at National Science Foundation by FY 2001, and perpetuating the Research and Experimentation tax credit.

Increasing Science and Technology Talent meant to establish NSF fellowships for providing incentives encouraging more American students to pursue post-graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. It appears that approach to increasing Science and Technology Talent needs to be clarified, and be more specific.

Innovation infrastructure implies development and implementation of advanced manufacturing systems, regional clusters (hot spots of innovation), and deploy advanced manufacturing technologies to improve productivity of the defense manufacturing base.

Well, reviewing the above summary, it doesn’t provide a clear impetus to accelerate innovation. If it is going to take several years to figure out what to do, the purpose of the act may be defeated. As a curiosity, I am wondering if anyone has been benefited from the National Innovation Act. If any individual, business, educational institution, or not-for-profit organization has received any support, resources, or encouragement for innovation, I am sure we all would love to learn about it. I am anxious to know what our Government is doing to facilitate GDP growth through innovation and to create new well paying jobs in America.

Look forward to hearing from you, the reader.