Innovation
The key to creating new jobs
The United States stands today at a crossroads, with two paths stretching before us.
One path twists and turns a bit but ultimately leads to economic recovery and future prosperity. The other path heads straight downhill — to a period of economic turmoil almost certainly even worse than the Great Recession our nation has just experienced. Selecting the right path is critical to our future.
For months – no, make that years – the U.S. economy has been hemorrhaging jobs. The United States has to find ways to rebuild its workforce. And, most experts agree, the key to creating new jobs is innovation.
When it comes to innovation, perhaps Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said it best.
“If we project what the world will be like 10 years from now without innovation in health, education, energy or food, the picture is quite bleak,” Gates says in the 2010 version of his annual letter from the charity foundation he runs with his wife and father. Without innovation, health care and energy costs will spiral upwards, predicts Gates.
“Society under-invests in innovation in general,” he warns.
Investment is the key, says Justin Rattner, chief technology officer for Intel and the man who developed the first supercomputer.
“Tens of millions of jobs were created from the innovations around the Internet. It’s time to do that again,” says Rattner. “Now is the time to be investing, not saving. You don’t save your way out of a recession. You invest your way out of it.”
“We have to start a lot of things,” he says. “Not all of them are going to work out. In fact, only a tiny fraction of them will turn into an Intel or a Google or a General Electric. But if you’re not investing you’re not giving yourself really a chance to play.”
Much of that investment, the experts say, must be plowed into increased research and development. But government spending on research and development actually fell by 3.8 percent in 2009. That’s the worst drop in 30 years – and one that urgently demands to be reversed. That kind of investment would mean thousands of new jobs – but there’s a real danger that we may not have the skilled workers needed to fill those jobs.
The blunt fact is that the United States isn’t graduating nearly the numbers of scientists and engineers that are coming out of universities in China, India and elsewhere.
That’s why education must be a key part of any strategy for job growth.
In a recent study, 15-year-old students in the United States ranked 21st out of 30 countries in science scores. In just 10 years, those students will be entering the labor market. But will the jobs be there for them? And, if so, will they be prepared to step into those jobs?
That can happen only if we take the right path at today’s crossroads – and embrace innovation as a guiding light along that path.
“Innovation” is our theme for this issue of Capacity and in the following pages we explore some of its many facets.
We start with a blunt dose of reality. In “The Plight of American Manufacturing,” Richard McCormack, editor and publisher of Manufacturing & Technology News, chronicles the disastrous decline of the nation’s industrial base.
“Without a healthy industrial base,” McCormack warns, “workers are no longer making a livable wage needed to maintain payments on assets like home, and they cannot afford basic necessities like energy, food, education and healthcare.”
Nowhere has that decline hit harder than on the auto industry, where sales have plummeted. In the year 2000, more than 1.3 million Americans were employed building automobiles. By 2009, fewer than 674,000 workers were left in an industry that has continued to shrink.
But innovation will drive the car industry into more prosperous days ahead, insists Bill Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. In an exclusive article written for Capacity, Ford also sees innovation as the key to resolving the global issues confronting us – the economy, energy and the environment.
Innovation is also the underlying theme to many other articles in this issue:
West Virginia, a state traditionally known for its coal and steel, is now the acknowledged nerve center of this country’s research, development and application of innovative biometric identification systems.
Thanks to innovative technology, the plastics industry is becoming a pillar of the West Virginia economy.
At Marshall University, researchers are conducting research that may lead to new ways to move or position single molecules – with incredible implications for improving health care.
Also at Marshall, a major telehealth initiative is under way that will give Huntington researchers, physicians and other health care providers access to the same kind of resources as their counpterparts at leading universities and research centers anywhere. That innovative step promises a huge dividend –nothing less than a healthier community.
A West Virginia firm, Touchstone Research Laboratory Ltd., is hard at work creating an innovative array of new uses for coal – not as a fuel but as carbon foam and high-density carbons. Strong but light in weight, the revolutionary materials provide a far-cheaper alternative to the petroleum-based composite materials now widely used.
Another article looks at the innovative strategies employed by the Challenger Center for Space Education to inspire students to learn and explore science and math. More than 25,000 students fly simulated “space missions” each year at the Challenger Center in Wheeling or through distance learning programs.
“Does your company have a process for nurturing ideas?” That’s the question asked by business consultant Rowan Gibson in his provocative article.
Finally, as we celebrate our 20th anniversary here at RCBI, we include in this issue a photo essay, “A Day in the Life of RCBI,” which we’ve assembled to offer a look at the many and varied services we provide. In a world where innovation must be the watchword, we’re doing our best to do our part.
“Society under-invests in
innovation in general.”
– Bill Gates
