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May 13, 2005
French innovation and lessons for the US
The following clip was included in the Wall Street Journal's on-line"The Morning Brief"
France Tries to Bolster Innovation
The French government is taking seriously at least one problematic part of being "Old Europe." In a few weeks, the Parliament will vote on the creation of a new Agency for Industrial Innovation as part of a wider law aimed at boosting confidence and economic development, Le Monde reports. The agency's role will be, as its title implies, to make French businesses and the country's economy more innovative. But it faces strong skepticism. "Idiosyncrasies, some intrinsically French, others common to Europeans -- especially the 'oldest' like France and Germany -- seem to block the development of innovative firms," Le Monde laments. It cites a study by the Richelieu Committee, a group formed to help small and midsized businesses, that compares the U.S. and Europe: While six of the 25 biggest American companies were created after 1960 -- Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Home Depot, Intel and Wal-Mart -- only one, German business-software giant SAP -- figures among the top 25 European firms.
The LeMonde story Pourquoi la France est incapable de creer un Microsoft goes on to cite a number of problems, including the lack of adequate financing of small innovative companies, the difficulty is sell to large French firms and to the French government, and an educational system that promotes conformity with the traditional model where imagination and creativity is not developed.
This last point is of especially relevance to the US. We have a financial system that promotes entrepreneurship and a system of mechanisms to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) (the Le Monde story specifically cites the Small Business Act). Our educational system is the weak link.
Fortunately, our educational system is not as tradition bound as the French. But it is not clear to me that we do a good job in fostering creativity. The movement toward standardized testing -- while important for accountability -- may just have the opposite affect on creativity. If the pedagogy is geared toward "teaching-to-the test," then activities that foster creativity go out the window. We must keep in mind that education in this information age should be about learning to learn, not just about knowing a specific fact. And I'm not sure whether our standardized tests capture this love of learning.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 13, 2005 9:11 AM
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