InformationWeek Analytics, the leading service for peer-based IT research and analysis, today announced the release of its “Research: Innovation Mandate” report. Nearly 625 business technology professionals weigh in on whether the nation is losing its position as global IT innovation leader. Report author Rob Preston, VP/editor in chief of InformationWeek, oversees the editorial direction of the world’s leading business technology media brand.
The “Research: Innovate Mandate” report respondents believe U.S. tech competititveness is in dire straits. Key concerns from partcipants include:
The offshoring of technology jobs to India and other countries is discouraging young Americans from pursuing tech careers and shipping innovation abroad. Among the 427 survey respondents who think the U.S. is losing or has lost its technology leadership position, 66%—the single highest percentage—cited offshore job movement as one of the top three reasons.
The U.S. education system isn’t adequately preparing young students in the so-called STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, and math—and U.S. companies aren’t giving their employees sufficient technical training. Some 58% of respondents who think the U.S. is losing or has lost its technology leadership position cited a failure in education as a main reason. Most of the industry experts we interviewed agree.
The U.S., unlike Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Finland, and several other countries, hasn’t had a cohesive national policy in technology areas such as mobile payments, intelligent electricity grids and transportation systems, green computing, and (until recently) broadband and electronic health records. Some 30% said they worry about a lack of technology leadership at the U.S. national policy-making level.
The U.S. government and U.S.-based companies don’t spend enough on tech-based R&D and long-term innovation. Some 25% think “lack of leadership at the tech CEO level,” including R&D investment, is a main reason for eroding U.S. tech competitiveness.
“Some of the survey respondents we interviewed for this groundbreaking report are concerned that Silicon Valley could become the next Detroit, with tech companies so entrenched in their traditional ways of doing business, and so overwhelmed by compliancy concerns and related issues, that they might just succumb to the pressure,” says Lorna Garey, content director of InformationWeek Analytics. “We don’t believe things are anywhere near that extreme—there’s still a tremendous amount of innovation coming out of the United States–but we need to pump up the volume.”
The U.S. government needs to test and benchmark students in K-12 against their peers in other countries, double R&D funding for tech-intensive agencies, and generally improve the environment for tech innovation by reducing corporate taxes, healthcare costs and regulations, according to former Intel chairman Craig Barrett, co-author of a series of recommendations on how the U.S. can maintain its global leadership role in tech innovation. “We have our priorities a little bit wrong,” Barrett told InformationWeek Analytics when interviewed for the “Research: Innovation Mandate” report. “This is not a Republican or Democrat issue—it’s the longstanding Washington, D.C., image that you don’t make any investments beyond a two-year cycle because you don’t get any return on investments for the next election cycle.”
