Organized Innovation: A Blueprint for Renewing America’s Prosperity

Product Description

“Organized” and “innovation” are words rarely heard together. But an organized approach to innovation is precisely what America needs today. This book presents a blueprint for coordinating technology breakthroughs to advance America’s global competitiveness and prosperity.

That prosperity is at risk. As other nations bolster technology innovation efforts, America’s research, development, and commercialization enterprise is falling behind. An “innovation gap” has emerged in recent decades, where US universities focus on basic research and industry concentrates on incremental product development. The country has failed to address the innovation gap because of three myths–innovation is about lone geniuses, the free market, and serendipity. These myths blind us from recognizing our dysfunctional system of unorganized innovation.

In
Organized Innovation, Currall, Frauenheim, Perry and Hunter provide a framework for optimizing the way America creates, develops, and commercializes technology breakthroughs. A roadmap for universities, business, and government, the book is grounded in the authors’ seminal study of the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center program, which has returned to the US economy more than ten times the funding invested in it.

For too long, our approach to technology innovation has been unorganized. The authors enable us to turn the page. They show us how to organize innovation for a more prosperous, hopeful future.

Review

“The authors’ model of
‘Organized Innovation’ is based on the remarkable success of the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Centers. This book offers a recipe for reversing worrisome trends in America’s leadership in science and technology and the competitiveness of its industries through enhanced partnerships among universities, industry, and federal agencies. At a time when federal budgets are severely constrained, it is all the more important to insure those resources are well spent.” –Neal Lane, physicist, former U.S. Presidential Science Adviser, former National Science Foundation director, and the Malcolm Gillis University Professor, Rice University

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Organized Innovation busts myths. Experts often speak of disruption and chaos as the fuel for innovation. Here, the authors reveal that meaningful innovation requires orchestrated serendipity — and an environment that strategically breeds such serendipity. The authors have identified an innovation blueprint that can be of immense benefit to American industry, government, academia, and society as a whole.” –C. L. Max Nikias, President and Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities, and former Founding Director of an NSF Engineering Research Center at the University of Southern California

“This compelling book underscores the unique partnership in the United States between the government, universities, and the private sector and the specific actions each can take to drive technological breakthroughs and innovation.” –William P. Sullivan, President and CEO, Agilent Technologies

“Based on extensive case studies of the Engineering Research Centers of the National Science Foundation, the authors lay out a compelling blueprint for ‘organized innovation,’ a systematic method for the successful commercialization of scientific discoveries. The book delineates the essential role of partnerships between the government, universities and the private sector in fostering the scientific research and teamwork on which innovation and economic progress depend.” –Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Professor of Business Administration and Economics, Director, Institute for Business & Social Impact, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, former Chairperson of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers, former Dean of London Business School and the Haas School of Business

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Organized Innovation blazes a new trail. It provides a novel framework that shows engin