The Kaufman Foundation has put up its collection of papers from their November 2008 symposium on innovation and entrepreneurship data. These symposia are annual events and are part of Kaufman's activities to improve measurement. The proceedings contain a number of interesting proposals for data improvement -- such as an outline of the 2009 Duke/Georgia Tech Innovation Survey and a proposal for a Innovation Radar 2.0 Survey.
Among the papers is an update on the Commerce Department's report of the Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy (see earlier posting).
While BEA is moving ahead with efforts to integrate intangibles into the System of National Accounts (see earlier posting), progress is slow. On the larger issue of innovation data, the update has this to say:
ORIGINAL RECOMMENDATION 5
Work toward development of a national innovation index.
UPDATE
No progress has been made on this recommendation. The creation of an innovation index requires a much greater understanding of the identifiers and causes of innovation in the national economy.
While I agree that the goal of creating a single national innovation index is both difficult and may not be the right direction, this is somewhat disheartening. However, work is progressing in a number of areas, including many other innovation surveys that are moving forward. The Duke-Georgia survey mentioned above includes a standard question on whether the company has introduced any new or significantly improved goods services or processes. The Next Generation Manufacturing Study, a multistate effort by the American Small Manufacturers Coalition (ASMC) that includes the MassMEP and 15 other MEP Centers, includes a similar set of questions. The proposed Innovation Radar 2.0 Survey is a more targeted approach to sample but takes a broader view of innovation "along twelve dimensions: offering, platform, solution, customer, customer experience, value capture, process, organization, supply chain, presence, network, and brand." These studies will give us a much better understanding of innovation in the US.
Another approach is that taken by Innovation Ecologies to create a new Regional Innovation Index, which is a set of measures. This is based, in part, on earlier work on a set of indices, Innovation Vital Signs Project, prepared by ASTRA--The Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America.
These and other efforts to improve our data on and understanding of innovation are important steps forward to crafting policies to overcome our current economic challenges and to thrive in the new I-Cubed Economy.
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