Exactly how does innovation contribute to the nation’s economic prosperity? A distinguished panel of national leaders, that includes Ashish Arora of Carnegie Mellon University, has been created to address that question.
The Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee was formed by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez to develop ways to measure innovation to better understand its impact. The hope is that it will lead to better policies for continued growth and prosperity in the U.S.
Arora was selected along with notables such as Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer, 3M CEO George Buckley and IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, as the result of a three-month outreach to find leaders representing the diversity of American economy. The committee will study metrics on effectiveness of innovation in various businesses and sectors, and work to identify which data can be used to develop a broader measure of innovation’s impact on the economy.
“The idea is that types of measures that exist, including R&D spending, may be missing dimensions or types of innovations,” says Arora. “In an economy where there’s a large service sector, we think there’s innovation that’s not getting patented.” Think about new ways of using IT that are yielding productivity benefits, he suggests. Or, in another example, “Think of what the Internet has done. Very little of that is reflected in R&D stats or patents.”
As professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Heinz School, Arora’s research focuses on technology and technical changes and the role of patents and licensing in promoting tech start-ups.
The first committee meeting will be held February 22nd in Washington, D.C. -- TC
Source: Ashish Arora, Carnegie Mellon
Image courtesy of Ashish Arora