Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown - NYTimes.com

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

I want to add my agreement with David. I am on Samsung's Telecom  
Presidents advisory board (all 2 of us) so I get a rather broad view  
of Samsung. They have made and I suspect will continue to make a major  
investment in technology, in facilities and in research.  I also saw  
several years ago NTT DoCoMo's investment in research and it too was  
major -- Not sure what it is now since the change of Presidents.  
Meanwhile BellLabs Holmdel is growing weeds in the gardens not  
technology or great researchers.

Dave

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: September 1, 2008 9:39:10 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown -  
NYTimes.com

Dave - from my perspective I found this article interesting because  
the headline "spins" it in an interesting direction.

I don't think there is an innovation slowdown in the *world*.   There  
is one in the US.  I'd focus on the point made in the article, that  
the dominant set of students in our Ph.D. programs in technology  
related programs are non-US citizens.

My research group of 8 graduate students at MIT is typical - 1 US  
student out of 8.

If I were to discuss with them how they feel about this article, I  
suspect they'd laugh at it - maybe ROTFLTAO, as we say.  *They*  
certainly are not worried about a *national* shortage of innovators in  
mobile wireless communications.  They have great futures at, for  
example, Samsung if they want - a company that has strong and  
innovative labs in Korea, Israel, etc.  Or Huawei, which is investing  
heavily in innovation and growth in the highly innovative, non-US  
markets.

Korea has adopted technology faster than America has. So have many non- 
G8 countries.

So I agree with Judy, whom I've known for a long time, that the US  
population is not doing well at innovation.

Perhaps it is time for the US tech sector to "get over" its assumption  
that "we" are necessarily the world's innovator and "they" must accept  
their roles as the world's indentured servants.  There's nothing about  
whiteness that creates innovators. Markets enable innovators.  Our  
market gets smaller every day - it's supported by a credit card from  
China and other producers of labor, energy resources, ....  Soon it  
won't matter much whether products are introduced in the US first, or  
second, or even third.

We do have a lead in technical education in our universities.  But  
we've already lost the lead we had in practical education "on the job"  
by the tendency of multinationals to move their product development  
over to Asia. Now if you want to become a great product developer -  
you do it in Asia.  Universities don't do practical training of  
product development engineers like the ones who used to work for me at  
Lotus Development when I was a v.p. for seven years.  They learn on  
the job. And that depends on where the job is.

I suspect this won't impress the folks inside the Beltway.  Too many  
advisers to the US political class are making money for themselves by  
sucking up to the powerful and telling them about their imperial  
puissance.  The multinationals won't tell the US government that  
they've moved talent offshore (their "brand" implies US, but look at  
who really does the ODM work for, say, Cisco - is it a US product  
development company or just a US G&A company with a sales force?)

The advisers and CEOs are constantly for their own private reasons  
reminding the homeland politicians of past US achievements in  
technology and the US's current ability to *project power* which will  
keep those other countries in line, and have them keep making the cool  
gadgets we buy in malls from multi-national companies who thrive on  
non-US innovation.

Here's my guess: I don't think it will be long before the privatized  
military and intelligence-sector companies the US depends on will  
decide to also move their base of operations outside the US - to  
Dubai, like one major "US" contractor did?  The markets are bigger,  
labor is cheaper, and the politicians less short-sighted.



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