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  1. Talent
    • Build a national innovation education strategy for a diverse, innovative and technically trained workforce
    • Catalyze the next generation of American innovators
    • Empower workers to succeed in the global economy
  2. Investment
  • Revitalize frontier and multidisciplinary research
  • Energize the entrepreneurial economy
  • Reinforce risk-taking and long-term investment
  • Infrastructure
  • Create national consensus for innovation growth strategies
  • Create a 21 st century intellectual property regime
  • Strengthen America’s manufacturing capacity
  • Build 21 st century innovation infrastructures—the health care test bed.

The report characterized its recommendations in the form of the following imperatives:

  • Educate next generation innovators
  • Deepen science and engineering skills
  • Explore knowledge intersections
  • Equip workers for change
  • Support collaborative creativity
  • Energize entrepreneurship
  • Reward long-term strategy
  • Build world-class infrastructure
  • Invest in frontier research
  • Attract global talent
  • Create high-wage jobs

The December 15 summit sought to mobilize key players in the American national innovation system to lobby the administration, Congress, and their own constituencies in academia and private industry to help implement the report’s recommendations. Participants included Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the council; F. Duane Ackerman, chair of the council and chairman and CEO, BellSouth Corporation; G. Wayne Clough, co-chair of the National Innovation Initiative, currently secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and then President of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Samuel H. Palmisano, co-chair of the National Innovation Initiative and chairman and CEO of the IBM Corporation.

President George W. Bush with Deborah Wince-Smith, President of the Council on Competitiveness, December 15, 2004, on the occasion of the Council’s Innovate America! Summit. Courtesy of Deborah Wince-Smith.

Rising above the gathering storm

In the fall of 2005, the U.S. National Academies released the report of a panel chaired by Norman R. Augustine, Both Augustine and Charles Vest, President of MIT, had been appointed to PCAST during the Clinton administration and retained their positions during the Bush administration. That Augustine and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Vest, as administration “insiders,” publicly criticized the policies of the Bush administration is reminiscent of the controversy during the Nixon administration when PSAC members, particularly Richard Garwin, openly criticized administration positions. retired chairman and CEO of the Lockeed Martin Corporation, entitled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21 st Century, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005). On October 20, immediately following the release of the report, Augustine, P. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman and CEO of Merck&Company, Inc., and William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, described the report and its recommendations in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science. Augustine noted, “It is the unanimous view of our committee that America today faces a serious and intensifying challenge with regard to its future competitiveness and standard of living. Further, we appear to be on a losing path. We are here today hoping both to elevate the nation’s awareness of this developing situation and to propose constructive solutions.”

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Source:  OpenStax, A history of federal science policy from the new deal to the present. OpenStax CNX. Jun 26, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11210/1.2
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