PROFESSOR JOHN KAO THINKS THAT AMERICA MAY BE LOSING THE INNOVATION WARS

Many countries are making much smarter investments in developing their innovative talent, according Professor Kao. In his new book, “Innovation Nation” he says countries from Brazil to China are building talent inside their countries. He postulates Americans, in both the public and private sectors, need to do more to preserve and add on to our reputation as the land of innovation.

America in reality still has a leading position, as we have 38 of the top 50 universities worldwide. The quality of education in other places is getting much better however. Thus the young innovators have more places to go to find careers and settle. Maybe we are losing…yes, it’s called a brain drain. Our public education and even the higher education systems are exhibiting signs of underachievement. In San Francisco, for instance, a third of the students fail to graduate from high school. We are even being beaten by Finland in the number of PhD’s we graduate each year. And a country like Vietnam, which was so poor even a decade ago, is now graduating 98% of its high school students.

Other countries are imitating the United States in their education systems too. And we are forgeting what made us great. So what do we do about this decline? According to Kao, I’m not saying all the answers are wrapped in the hand of the federal government. Government has an important role to play in terms of funding, creating standards, and making investments, like research and development. There‘s plenty of world problems to work on and we always have been the first ones to jump on. Maybe we already are on, but we don’t recognize that we are still pre-eminent. We must never let up any time in the future.