One other follow on to the earlier posting on the Center for American Progress's report on innovation: their look at British Innovation Policy. This paper, by Will Straw at CAP, outlines the highlights, the problems and the evolution of the UK's innovation policy. The paper touches upon an number of UK reports, most notably the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills' (DIUS) Innovation Nation.
By the way, the first DUIS Annual Innovation Report has just been released as well.
I have always thought that the UK has valuable lessons for the US. In an earlier paper, UK leads; US lags, I talked about UK's focus on design as a competitive advantage. One of Straw's lessons for the US is, for me, especially interesting:
The final area where Britain provides lessons for the United States is at the cutting edge of innovation policy. U.S. policymakers should watch closely as the policies outlined in Innovation Nation are rolled out, including the innovation index. With a tight fiscal situation in the United States, and arguably more pressing social concerns, scarce resources will need to be spent wisely. This therefore provokes the question of what provides the biggest bang for a government buck.
It can be argued that the United States already has incentives in place to encourage applied research and that commercializing basic research has not been the same problem that it has been in Britain. New information on the make up of innovation within society could therefore help a new administration decide whether to continue to focus its innovation policies on science and technology or whether there are opportunities and, indeed, a comparative advantage in the service businesses that make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy.
I'm not sure that it is necessarily an either/or. But I strongly agree that we need an innovation policy that does more than focus on science and technology. Looking at what the UK is doing can help us broaden our own view.
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