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Can Governments Till the Fields of Innovation policy?

Innovation policy — the tricky, many-step process by which ideas become products and services — has typically been seen, studied and celebrated at the micro level, as a pursuit for entrepreneurs and clever companies. But governments are increasingly wading into the innovation game, declaring innovation agendas and appointing senior innovation officials. The impetus comes from two fronts: daunting challenges in fields like energy, the environment and health care that require collaboration between the public and private sectors; and shortcomings of traditional economic development and industrial policies.   John Kao, right, a former professor at Harvard Business School, spoke this month at a meeting covering the appropriate government role in creating industries and jobs. Innovation policy, to be sure, is an emerging discipline. It lacks crisp definitions or metrics. The most explicit embrace of it has been outside the United States, though the Obama administration is taking some initial steps. Its new budget directs the Bureau of Economic Analysis to develop statistics that “uniquely measure the role of innovation” in the economy. And the government’s new chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, speaks of building “innovation platforms” to spur growth. The rising worldwide interest in innovation policy represents the search to answer…
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De Bono still trying to rid the world of uncreative thinking 40 years on

Did you hear the one about the old businessman who dies and goes to hell? Bumps into an elderly colleague down in the furnace happily seated with a voluptuous woman on his knee. Guy says to his mate, “This can't be hell, you're not being punished, you're having fun!” To which the friend replies, “It is punishment — for her!” Thinking about new possibilities, as much so in the business life as in any afterlife, sometimes helps.         Edward de Bono, the man who both introduced the term “lateral thought” to the English language and regularly retells this gag to illustrate what he has been on about ever since coining the original expression in the late 1960s, is booked to visit New Zealand next week as a guest of the local Human Resources Institute to offer more of his offbeat wit and perspectives at a time when each have been in notably short international supply. Speaking with the NBR ahead of his arrival, Dr de Bono (76) said that uncreative thinking, rather than the likes of environmental degradation or the state of the global banking system, remained the gravest threat to mankind. By uncreative thinking he means…