Innovate or Die

Innovate or Die

While listening to an Itunes U podcast, from Stanford University, about entrepreneurs, creativity and market innovation it struck me what is really wrong with the current attack on government by the Tea Party and conservatives generally.

Conservatives love to criticize progressives for having too much government regulation that supposedly chokes innovation and risk taking. "Get government off our backs", and "taxes are job killers" ;etc., are the chants we hear.

And they are sometimes hard to counter. After all, it makes sense that creativity and risk taking would be encouraged more in a less regulated environment.

Not necessarily. Silicon Valley has grown in California, spawning Apple Computer, Google; et al., amidst what conservatives call the most "repressive" regulation environment in the United States. Conservatives love to talk up the tax rates and corporate tax environment that supposedly retards new economic development; but if that was true, then what about Apple Computer, Silicon Valley, HP; Intel; and on and on?

The facts are the opposite. Silicon Valley goes back well over thirty years, with the Palo Alto Research Center, Stanford, Cal; etc., turning out thousands of electrical and electronic engineers, who have revolutionized the way we think, research, play, and live.

The fact that much of the technological explosion in devices took place in the west side of San Francisco Bay is no accident. You never hear gripping about repressive regulations or government in Silicon Valley, where government research dollars spawned from the race to space, started the whole thing in 1960; President Kennedy's famous pledge to go to the moon by the end of the decade.

The climate for innovation is excellent too, there are several institutions of higher learning, anchored by Stanford, who have encouraged research, development and especially innovation. Government is everywhere, in every research lab and facility. A NASA Space Center lies right in the middle of Silicon Valley which anchors the entrepreneurial environment.

But several of these entrepreneurs have failed. The "Dot Com" implosion of the early 21st century is a good example of several ideas, like computer generated ordering of groceries, that flopped.

But that is the nature of entrepreneurship; the freedom to fail, without punitive consequences. Several of the silicon valley innovations were attained through years of trial and error, until the right combination of factors, including market conditions, existed to lead to success. Millions of government dollars didn't hurt either.

Government needs the latitude to fail as well. Education for example, is going through a highly criticized period right now. There are forces clamoring for change, and literally dozens of new and revolutionary ideas to reform and improve education.

Unfortunately, there are also political conditions, punitive in nature, that are choking successful innovation.

This is especially true with conservatives' efforts to constantly hamstring and limit government.

In educational innovation, this means a project life of often months; if the idea doesn't produce immediate results, or if there are cost overruns, it is immediately attacked, maligned, and destroyed.

The result is a frenzied assortment of half measures, fits and starts, that accomplish little.

Government is the problem, conservatives say. Meanwhile, the large problems of energy, environment, education and yes, health care, go unsolved, and innovational solutions are choked off before they have a chance to succeed.

Government is discredited, while the problems it can best address, just grow in complexity and urgency.

For example, there is no doubt that the world is running out of oil. The number of years this will take is open to debate, but sweet crude oil, that led to the cheap transportation of the past century, is running out.

And conservatives, led by the petroleum industry for some strange reason, are resisting and discrediting most innovation energy conservation efforts. I have never understood why the petroleum institute is so reluctant to look into conservation efforts, because when they run out of product, they are out of business. Have you ever wondered why they seem so hell bent to sell all their oil as fast as they can?

As a result we are faced with a dwindling supply of petroleum, and no plan whatsoever to adapt to it. None.

The consequences of this will be disastrous to our economy. But innovation is punished, "Just Drill Baby" is the simple solution to a problem that will take all the brain power America possesses to solve.

And, there must be profit motive in the innovations it will take to deal with declining oil. So far, we are frozen, innovations are attacked as wasteful. Solar and wind power are looked upon as liberal fads.

Americans still purchase huge cars and trucks, even while the gas prices bankrupt them.

If this approach would have been present in Silicon Valley, I would be typing this blog on a typewriter; manual no doubt.

The money and energy to innovate, explore and try things would have been cut off, with no development.

There would be no Apple, no IBM, no nothing.

This is the great threat of the regressive policies of America's Right Wing today. There exists a prejudice toward government that has frozen innovation and invention; while the problems that only government has the scope to address mount up.

We are faced with problems that the private sector cannot solve, without government team work. But conservatives, who must be pure in their ideology, take oaths to "drown government in the bathtub".

This is nonsense and dangerous. If we don't deal with the threats to our way of life that running out of gas poses, we are done as a economic power in the world.

Government must innovate, and try things. As Roosevelt famously said, he was the doctor and the American economy was the patient. He tried one remedy after another, and yes some were zany and didn't work. But many did, and form the financial and governmental bedrock upon which our modern economy is based.

We need that again to survive, another burst of innovation and ideas to deal with the serious problems of the global economy. Unfortunately, the "voices of no" have us paralyzed.

The consequences of this lack of innovation and risk taking will be severe and possibly nation ending.