Customer Reviews

Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works

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Unlike the other three books I recommend below, this book assumes an honest process and strives to recommend the best possible approach to government policy toward science. It was put together during the Clinton years, and its prescriptions have been largely ignored by both the public and the current (Bush) Administration. Of the four, it is the most practical and least controversial.

It does not, however, provide a complete picture. Three other books are helpful:

Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion by Daniel Greenberg is by far the best, the standard in the field, the book to buy if you buy only one. The overall picture is ugly: corruption in politics, corruption in the universities, corruption in the corporations, and the public pays in both excessive costs and lost opportunities for advancement.

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney is the book that is the most compelling on the perversions of the extremist Republicans (I am a moderate Republican). Read this first or last, depending on your disposition.

Finaly, Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress by Daniel Sarewitz, is an excellent counterpart to Greenberg as well as the other two books If science is corrupt on the one hand, it is also over-sold on the other, a point that Sarewitz addresses very methodically.

I take three bottom lines from these four books together:

1) We are spending too much on military science & research.

2) Neither Congress nor the Executive have a serious strategy for prioritizing problems, finding private sector partners, and providing seed money for innovative solutions.

3) Both Congress and the Executive, as well as the public and the media, are incredibly ignorant about what science can and cannot do, and where all the money is going to generally poor effect.

4) This is all so important that Science, like Intelligence, needs its own Supreme Court. I am persuaded we need a new form of hybid public agency that is fully independent of the Executive, receiving a percentage of the total disposable budget (say 3%) and hence not subject to Congression pressures.

Inspired by one of the other reviews, I would second the view that all these books are US-centric, and that we are missing a huge opportunity for multinational consortiums that might dramatically diversity and accelerate scientific progress, within agreed-upon ethical and cultural parameters, if separated from the ideology of government and the corruption of the private sector.

I do strongly recommend this book for S&T poliymakers and all people working on Strategic Policy on Science, Technology and Innovation.

Although focused on the American experience, the authors present us with a nice-to-read guide for policy action and decision-making on scientific and technological issues.

I call for a special attention to the text of JaneE. Fountain about Social Capital - in today's society the main issue for innovation. Specially in countries like Brazil we do have to enhance actions and activities that improve and enable the creation of a great social capital in order to accelerate innovation processes in the country.

It is a book that you must have in your work desk !