Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back [Hardcover]

John Kao (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2007

Not long ago, Americans could rightfully feel confident in our preeminence in the world economy. The United States set the pace as the world's leading innovator: from the personal computer to the internet, from Wall Street to Hollywood, from the decoding of the genome to the emergence of Web 2.0, we led the way and the future was ours. So how is it, bestselling author and leading expert on innovation John Kao asks, that today Finland is the world's most competitive economy? That U.S. students rank twenty-fourth in the world in math literacy and twenty-sixth in problem-solving ability? That in 2005 and 2006 combined, in a reverse brain drain, 30,000 highly trained professionals left the United States to return to their native India?

Even as the United States has lost standing in the world community because of the war in Iraq, Kao warns, the country is losing its edge in economic leadership as well. The future of our prosperity, and of our national security, is at serious risk. But it doesn't have to be this way. Based on his in-depth experience advising many of the world's leading companies and studying cutting-edge innovation "best practices" in the most dynamic hot spots of innovation both in the United States and around the world, Kao argues that the United States still has the capability not only to regain our competitive edge, but to take a bold step out ahead of the global community and secure a leadership role in the twenty-first century. We must, though, take serious and concerted action fast.

First offering a stunning, troubling portrait of just how serious is the erosion in recent years of U.S. competitiveness in innovation, Kao then takes readers on a fascinating tour of the leading innovation centers, such as those in Singapore, Denmark, and Finland, which are trumping us in their more focused and creative approaches to fueling innovation. He then lays out a groundbreaking plan for a national innovation strategy that would empower the United States to actually innovate the process of innovation: to marshal our vast resources of talent and infrastructure in the particular ways that his studies of innovation have shown lead to transformative results.

Innovation Nation is vital reading for all those Americans who are troubled by the great challenges the United States faces in the ever-more-competitive economy of our twenty-first-century world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Alarmed by the lack of innovation in the United States today, former Harvard Business School professor and current consultant Kao diagnoses the situation, describes best practices, explains how innovation works and puts forth a strategy proposal, all in an attempt to squirt ice water in America's ear. Kao-who has been an entrepreneur, a psychiatrist, an educator and a pianist for Frank Zappa-is clearly passionate about his premise. Aimed primarily at policy makers and legislators, his three-pronged agenda is designed to help the government create a culture committed to constantly reinventing the nature of its innovation capabilities. However, his authoritative and history-rich book is not necessarily useful to the everyday reader, as Kao includes few small-scale strategies. His one effort to bring this down to the citizen's level-in fictional short stories about the future-is a little contrived, jamming in statistics and leaning on flashbacks. But overall, the book does its job. The question is, will lawmakers look at it and follow its lead? (Oct. 2)
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Review

"Tom Friedman sounded the alarm and gave us the big picture about the flattening of the world, and the decline of education and innovation in the U.S.A. John Kao gives us the specifics on exactly why and how the U.S.A. is losing our most valuable asset -- the ability of Americans to come up with great ideas, from light bulbs to PCs. Most importantly, Kao points in the direction the U.S.A. ought to go if it is not to become a global also-ran."

-- Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

"The arms race of the last century has been replaced by a new global brain race -- and the U.S. is in danger of unilaterally disarming. This inspiring book frames the challenge facing us and offers immensely practical advice on how to regain our place as innovation leaders."

-- Paul Saffo, Roy Amara Fellow at the Institute for the Future

"John Kao hits the nail squarely on the head. In an engaging and highly readable way he delivers a timely message with important implications for our future -- that the global race for innovation is on, the field is filled with highly focused competitors, and our biggest mistake would be complacency."

-- Sean Randolph, President & CEO, Bay Area Economic Forum

"A nation's capacity for innovation will determine whether it will be rich and powerful or poor and weak. In his insightful exploration of the world of innovation, John Kao makes clear the challenge that America faces as its own capacity for innovation erodes even as the rest of the world's abilities are growing. America's postition of power and wealth will be determined by whether it can rise to meet the challenge of the innovation agenda that Kao lucidly sets out."

-- Peter Schwartz, Chairman, Global Business Network

"It should be a surprise to no one that John Kao's new book is a highly innovative approach to innovation. He analyzes with crystalline clarity the challenges to U.S. innovation hegemony from ambitious and hungry competitors, China, India, Finland, and even Estonia. He does not shrink from advocating specific solutions, including the creation in the United States of 20 $1B Innovation Hubs and a National Innovation Advisor. His vision is not, however, American. He shows us how the whole planet needs to accelerate its capacity for innovation. For those of us who lead institutes dedicated to innovation this is a Bible and a Koran."

-- Reg Kelly, Chairman, Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium, and Director, Institute of Quantitative Biomedical Research

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (October 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416532684
• ISBN-13: 978-1416532682
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Innovative About this Book, May 31, 2008

By 

J. Groen "Jerry Groen" (GURNEE, ILLINOIS USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (Hardcover)

For a book about Innovation, there is nothing Innovative about this book. The stories about Singapore, Finland and Ireland are well known and can be found in Business Week or Wall Street Journal. Yes, and well read readers will know that we are losing our innovation edge to China and India. No new information there. And, his answers are not new - use the internet, improve our education systems, entice outside talent, better offices, etc. In fact, I would even question his definition of innovation - jazz is innovative but classical music is not? He starts with the assertion that innovation is not just about technology and science and then labors onto technology and science. Further, at the end of this book, he used the "I" word so many times to emphasize his opinion, that I lost count of it. I can go on about this book, but let me leave it with this - this is the worst book on innovation that I have read. A lot of borrowing from others, a lot hype on what he will provide for solutions and then NO delivery. Don't waste your time on this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovating a New Future, March 16, 2008

By 

Dennis DeWilde "The Performance Connection" (Cleveland area, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (Hardcover)

Acknowledging the same reality, but offering a glimmer of National hope to Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" thesis, John Kao lays the framework for an "Innovation Solution" toward the vision of America becoming: "...accelerant for global innovation by steering the world toward addressing the formidable range of wicked problems we face..." It is a brilliantly written, comprehensive analysis; filled with possibility and promise, even as it accepts the reality of our shortcomings and the enormity of these "Wicked Problems".

Defining innovation as, "the ability of individuals, companies, and entire nations to continuously create their desired future", Kao takes the reader on a quick trip around the globe to demonstrate how the key success factors for innovation are no longer domiciled within the U.S.A. He demonstrates how Talent, Capital, Government Investment, and the Silicon Valley concept are now everywhere - Bangalore to Singapore and Finland to Ireland. It is a shocking view of reality that will be shared by most readers who are regular travelers to countries abroad.

The author then offers his proposal: "...the United States specialize in a more comprehensive, transformational style of innovation, one that allows for placing big bets on the future, deploying its enormous resources, carrying out ambitious and mold-breaking experiments, reinventing the way we educate our young, aligning our federal, state, and local agendas, and recharging the magnetism of openness and opportunity that has historically attracted the world's talent to our shores." And, chapter by chapter he demonstrates how the components of innovation work, and how the U.S. might re-create these components as the foundation for addressing what he has called the wicked problems we face.

His chapter on "Making Talent" - it is leaving us and our educational system is broken - challenges not only the current educational system, but also the marketing of innovation and innovative educating of and to our young people. He argues that we must also continue to "Seduce Talent" from abroad thru offers of opportunities to specialize and the building of a reputation for diversity and tolerance. He shows how openness and trust are part, but only part of the environment for innovation that must be developed, and he suggests a "National Innovation Agenda" that includes the appointment of a National Innovation Advisor to the President. In all, it is a bold, but realistic approach to earn anew, America's, "...status of "indispensable nation" by using our mastery of innovation as a force for good in the world."

The book's offering is far too comprehensive to be reduced to a single review and it will be well worth your time to read the ~ 270 pages. The stories are interesting and informative, and the logic is such that you can do a bit of skimming if you are short on time. I highly recommend this book.

Dennis DeWilde, author of "The Performance Connection"

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Kao, a skilled and knowledgeable writer, examines a imited set of U.S. policy problems, April 14, 2008

By 

Frank T. Manheim (Fairfax VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back (Hardcover)

The author's book offers what may be considered by Europeans as a curiously anomalous idea: that the United States's main problems stem from insufficient innovation. Can one describe as lacking in innovation a nation that produces out-of-the-box ideas like community colleges, sending a man to the moon, Borlaug's green revolution, Internet, web browsers, CD ROM and DVD, Amazon.com - including its revolutionary introduction of reader reviews (no, I am not a paid agent for Amazon), Ebay, blogging, Apple products, and endless Nobel prize winners in biology and medicine?

Certainly, the nation's educational problem is dire. But does Kao really believe that innovation is the key to fixing the U.S.'s systematic deterioration in economy (deindustrialization), infrastructure, fiscal soundness, pension security; that clever ideas could deal with our anomalous levels of crime and violence compared with all nations of comparable GDP,political gridlock, or our degraded popular TV and entertainment media?

I might hire Kao to rev up innovation in my company if I were an industrialist, but I would not elect or appoint him to advise on public policy issues. Instead, I suggest that Kao may be a symptom of the fragmentation and willingness to settle for superficiality that has developed in the U.S. over the past 45 years.

The EU is not as flashy and exciting as the U.S. But it has evolved a civilized pattern of cooperation. It leads in environmental policy and acting on (not just writing or yelling about)global climate change. The Dollar is sinking ever lower with respect to the Euro (now trading at 1.55). Most citizens in European nations approaching or exceeding our GDP have greater security for the essentials in their lives than do a large fraction of Americans; and their industries are, by and large, outcompeting us, even buying out what remains in the U.S.

I suggest that innovation is now limited from being applied to critical areas like those I mentioned above because many educated, bright, and influential Americans in academia, politics, and business have short-range focus in their thinking. We don't seem to have much interest in looking at problems holistically, having humility, learning from history or other societies. I'm not sure which author I'd recommend instead of Kao, but I'm looking (and also writing, myself).