Innovate!

Here are a few clips from a recent article written for the OECD. It speaks to the importance of innovation in advancing our economy.

"Economists say that innovation fuels our economy. Research in the physical sciences and engineering have produced incredible innovations that have driven our growth: the Internet, teraflop computers, ultra-small cell phones and PDAs, myriad laser technologies and the global-positioning system - - not to mention jobs, a better quality of life and a higher standard of living. As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris has noted, "The underlying long-term growth rates in [the 30] OECD economies depend on maintaining and expanding the knowledge base" (original emphasis).

But innovation and technological development do not happen with the snap of a finger. They depend on scientific discoveries, which in turn depend on investment in long-term research and education. For quite some time, we have shortchanged both. Our global competitors have not."

By Burton Richter, former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1976. Jerry Jasinowski is president of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington.