U.S. Innovation Lead At Risk

Feb. 3, 2006

Five warning signs are apparent, report asserts.

One day after President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union speech to the U.S. Congress, announced creation of an American Competitiveness Initiative to encourage innovation, the Manufacturing Institute and the Council of Manufacturing Associations released a report asserting U.S. leadership in manufacturing innovation is at risk.

The report, prepared by Joel Popkin and Company, an economic consulting firm, contends "five clear warning signs" point to problems ahead.

Those signs, the report says, are a slower-than-average U.S. recovery from recession, under-utilized manufacturing capacity, a smaller U.S. share of global manufactured goods trade, a shortage of skilled workers and low growth in R&D spending.

"If the innovation process goes offshore, America will lose much of its capacity to generate wealth, and a decline in long-term economic growth is assured," Joel Popkin, the report's co-author, said in a statement released along with the report on Feb. 1. "The rapid growth in overseas manufacturing is creating new global centers with the critical mass necessary to build their own innovation machines," he added.

"Developing human capital for a high-performance workforce must be a top national priority if America is to remain the world's leader in innovation and productivity," said Jerry J. Jasinowski, president of the Manufacturing Institute, the research and education arm of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). "The broadening shortage of skilled workers threatens our nation's ability to compete in today's fast-paced and increasingly demanding global economy and will only worsen as the Baby Boomers retire."

The report makes several policy recommendations, many long-advocated by NAM and other manufacturing trade associations, to strengthen U.S. innovation and improve productivity. Among them: renewing the federal R&D tax credit that expired at the end of 2005, improving math and science education, encouraging workers to pursue lifetime training, and improving the speed and efficiency of U.S. transportation and communications.

"We need a bold action agenda to develop human capital, revitalize fundamental research and encourage productivity-enhancing investments in order to maintain a critical mass of production and a viable innovation process in this country," said Jasinowski.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.