Assessing the Impacts of Changes in the Information Technology R&D Ecosystem Retaining Leadership in an Increasingly Global Environment (2009) / Chapter Skim
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(See Box S.1 for a discussion of the term and its origins.) That ecosystem -- encompassing university and industrial research enterprises, emerging start-up companies and more mature technology companies, the industry that finances innovative firms, and the regulatory environment and legal frameworks -- remains unquestionably the strongest such ecosystem in the world today.
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Yet over this period, the IT industry became more globalized, especially with the dramatic rise of the economies of India and China, fueled in no small part by their development of vibrant information technology industries. Ireland, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and some Scandinavian countries have also developed
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The technologies that developed around the Internet and the services that it enabled generated a period of euphoria characterized by exuberance, burgeoning enrollments in IT programs, rising valuations, the suspension of fiscal prudence, and a stock market in the stratosphere between 1995 and 2000. The period of the late 1990s witnessed the unusual convergence of three trends: the move to deregulate many parts of the nation's telecommunications system (with implications for network connectivity)
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Yet starting in 2005, the pendulum began to swing back in a positive direction, with the emergence of new technologies such as multicore p rocessors, new programming languages and environments, Internet data centers, and new applications that capture the phenomenon of social networking. Technology companies once again were able to launch successful initial public offerings (IPOs)
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IT ecosystem as the unintended consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for small companies, and there is serious discussion of patent and intellectual property litigation reforms. Technology continues to evolve and even accelerate: radio-frequency identification, grid computing, dynamic Web pages, social networking and Web 2.0, open-source development, and the emerging shifts toward IT-enabled services represent exciting opportunities. Much remains to be accomplished in applying information technology for the benefit of humankind, in terms of improved health, better education, and more social opportunity.
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Toward this end, it is necessary for the United States to have the bestfunded and most-creative research institutions; to develop and attract the best technical and entrepreneurial talent among its own people as well as those from around the world; to make its economy the world's most attractive for forming new ventures and nurturing small, innovative firms; and to create the environment that will ensure the deployment of the most advanced technology infrastructures, applications, and services in the United States itself for the benefit of the nation's people, institutions, and firms. The findings and recommendations of the committee presented in the sections below are organized according to four broad objectives.
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Although the advances of information technology over the past 50 years have been truly breathtaking, the field remains in its relative infancy, and continuing advances over the coming decades can be expected as long as the IT R&D ecosystem's capacity to sustain innovation is preserved and enhanced. Among the impacts anticipated from advances in IT during the coming decades are, for example, safer, robotics-enhanced automobiles; a more scalable, manageable, secure, and robust "new Internet"; enhanced information storage devices for personal use with improved search and retrieval capabilities; personalized and collaborative educational tools for tutoring and just-in-time learning; and personalized health monitoring.
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In its August 2007 report Leadership Under Challenge: Information Technology R&D in a Competitive World, PCAST noted that the European Union is pursuing the goal of strengthening its position in information and communication technologies through increased cooperative R&D investment (roughly $12 billion) through 2013.10 The PCAST report also noted that by 2006, China's overall R&D spending had exceeded that of Japan and amounted to about 1.4 percent of its GDP -- on a path to achieve a national goal of 2.5 percent of GDP by 2020.11 As China, Japan, and Europe aggressively increase their targeted IT R&D investment levels, it is appropriate and necessary for the United States to adjust its own federal IT R&D spending level correspondingly, just as individual businesses, following best practices, track their global competitors' business models in order to avoid falling behind in global market share.
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This advice could be provided in a number of ways, including the augmentation of the current presidential science and technology advisory structure, the establishment of a highlevel IT adviser to the President, or the reestablishment of an IT-specific presidential advisory committee (such as the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, which operated from 1997 to 2005)
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engineering and technology companies started between 1995 and 2005, mostly in software and innovation and in manufacturing-related services, at least one of the key founders was born outside the United States.20 16National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (2005-06)
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The committee recognizes that these issues are not simple -- for example, in the case of corporate governance, the dampening effects of increased regulation have to be weighed against the benefits of restoring and maintaining public confidence in equity markets. But the committee believes that it is vital to keep the United States attractive for new venture formation and to sustain the nation's unrivaled ability to transform innovative new concepts into category-defining prod
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Should this situation persist into the future, the United States will no longer be the nation in which the most innovative, most advanced technology and highest value-added products and services are conceptualized and developed. Moreover, in addition to broadly fostering research and commercial innovation, government-sponsored R&D can help meet particular government demands.
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Government (federal, state, and local) should foster commercial innovation and itself make strategic investments in IT R&D and deployment so that the United States can retain a global lead position in areas where it has particular mission requirements.
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