[Infowarrior] - Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown

[Richard Forno]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/technology/01estrin.html

September 1, 2008
Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Judy Estrin, 53, has spent her entire career in  
Silicon Valley, a region that thrives on constant innovation. Ms.  
Estrin, the former chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, has  
founded four technology companies.

Yet she is deeply worried that Silicon Valley — and the United States  
as a whole — no longer foster the kind of innovation necessary to  
develop groundbreaking technologies and sustain economic growth.

“I am generally not an alarmist, but I have become more and more  
concerned about the state of our country and its innovation,” she said  
last week, explaining why she wrote her book, “Closing the Innovation  
Gap,” which arrives in bookstores Tuesday. “We have a national  
innovation deficit.”

< - >

  Ms. Estrin argues that short-term thinking and a reluctance to take  
risks are causing a noticeable lag in innovation. She cites a variety  
of contributing factors. A decline in federal and university financing  
for research has dried up new ideas, she said. When research does  
produce new technologies, entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists  
who back them have been too cautious to make big bets — especially  
after the costly failures of the dot-com bust. If start-up companies  
do find financing, she said, new regulations make it hard for them to  
grow, and the focus of investors on short-term performance discourages  
companies from taking risks.

Ms. Estrin’s suggestions for bolstering innovation range from the  
vague, like advising venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to take  
more risks, to the specific, like mandating that schools pay teachers  
higher salaries.

Some of her prescriptions are unlikely to become reality, like her  
idea for a new government body modeled after the Federal Reserve that  
sets science policy without Congressional input.

Some thinkers on innovation agree with Ms. Estrin’s assessment. “There  
is a remarkable telescoping in of vision and an unwillingness to make  
long-term bets,” said Vinton G. Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist at  
Google.