

The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S. - quizbiz
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135000953288.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story

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krschultz
We've past all the long hanging fruit. Everything from here on forward is
going to take more time, money, and people than. 100-200 years ago there were
thousands of people at best with the education to push things forward. Often
they were experts in several fields. Today we have hundreds of thousands of
people pushing on these fields (of which people are only an expert in one or
two things). All of the easy answers are gone.

This is compounded by the bar being really high and the regulation really
thick. What counts as a great innovation in alternate energy today requires at
least being competitive with existing technology, which has almost one hundred
years of development by tens of thousands of engineers at thousands of
companies. It is no wonder it takes longer. And you have to worry (rightly so)
the environmental and safety aspects of things that wouldn't have mattered 150
years ago.

All of these things slow down progress and make it more expensive. One of the
reason progress was cheap in computer science was because the field was young,
but as it matures we will see a slow down in innovation. Only fools will
continue to believe Moore's "law" has any truth looking 20 years into the
future.

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netsp
Careful.

 _What counts as a great innovation in alternate energy today requires at
least being competitive with existing technology, which has almost one hundred
years of development by tens of thousands of engineers at thousands of
companies._

That also applies to coal vs charcoal.

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ori_b
It seems to me that the problem isn't the lack of innovation. It isn't the
lack of ideas. It seems to be that investors want instant gratification and
rapid commercialise.

However, several of the largest fundamental advances in technology came out of
pure research, curiosity without the attempt to commercialise. For example,
when the laser was first created, the researchers saw no commercial
applications for it. Now, lasers are a key component of our fiber-optic
communication backbones.

What's needed isn't more innovation; Instead, more patience is needed. More
exploration out of curiosity. More investment in pure knowledge. More
research.

The fruits of commercial applications will grow off the tree of knowledge only
if the tree of knowledge is well nourished.

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quizbiz
Read
[http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/06/insufficient_in.ht...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/06/insufficient_in.html)
for more

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riffic
check out this filmstrip, Brian Dewan on innovation:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9638211...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96382116)

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akkartik
counterpoint: [http://fredwilson.vc/post/117874217/when-we-talk-about-
innov...](http://fredwilson.vc/post/117874217/when-we-talk-about-innovation-
and-global)

