the
innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.
Vol.
9, No. 7 - July 2009
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Are We in an Innovation Recession?
By Jeff Govendo
As
if there weren't already enough ways to describe the state of our
economy, a recent cover story by Michael Mandel in Business Week entitled
"Innovation Interrupted," suggests we are experiencing
an innovation recession. Many expected breakthroughs or actual
discoveries of a decade ago -- in medicine, transportation, energy,
nanotechnology, and other areas -- have simply not found their way
to commercial success. Gene therapy, miniaturized machinery, satellite
communications, cloning and speech recognition are but a few of the
potential breakthrough technologies that have shown disappointing
results since the late 90's.
Mandel
points to some products, such as Apligraf, an artificial tissue substitute
from Massachusetts biotech firm Organogenesis, in which the promise
of 10 years ago is only now coming to fruition; sort of a delayed
response.
For
others, though, commercialization of great new technologies has simply
not happened. Recall that in 1998, for example, then GM chairman
John Smith promised a hydrogen-powered fuel cell car available to
the masses by 2004.
As
you know, GM isn't quite there yet.
Mandel
also explains that this failure of innovation has directly contributed
to our current economic woes, noting that "A high-wage country
such as the U.S. either has to develop innovative products and services
to compete with low-cost countries such as China or accept a lower
standard of living." Perhaps snowed by the misplaced optimism
of the late 90's, and anticipating handsome returns on investment
in innovative technologies, many Americans overextended themselves,
aided and abetted, of course, by easy access to ill-conceived, shaky
investment products (read subprime mortgages).
The
rest, as they say, is (recent) history.
In
my opinion, the most worrisome aspect of this difficult period is
not so much the disappointments of the past decade per se, but that
such disappointments could have the effect of convincing business
leaders -- indeed, all of us -- that innovation isn't all it's cracked
up to be. That our time-tested capacity for drawing upon American
ingenuity and creativity no longer means that much. That perhaps we'll
just stop trying.
This,
of course, would be most unfortunate, as America's ability to think
and execute its way out of adversity has historically been second
to none. And in truth, I don't believe this is how our business
leaders do see things, despite Mandel's keen observations about the
lack of return on some of the past decade's innovation investments.
Still,
the challenge for business leaders-- whether the CEO of a mega-corporation
or the manager of a locally-owned storefront -- is to instill in their
people a sense that ideas do matter. That despite the very real
need to simply keep the enterprise afloat during this troubling period,
there is still room for new thinking, and a need for it as well.
Because
I would surely hate to see a sequel to Mandel's article entitled "Innovation
Discontinued."
