Category: Innovation

  • Quantifying Innovation and Investment
    Quantifying Innovation and Investment

    According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), federal funding for research, development, and facilities has declined from 1.23 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal year 1976 to an estimated 0.75 percent in the President’s proposed 2015 budget.

  • Iowa and the Digital Lab for Manufacturing
    Iowa and the Digital Lab for Manufacturing

    Yesterday, I had the privilege to be at the White House as President Obama announced the Digital Lab for Manufacturing (the Digital Lab), which includes the University of Iowa and a host of national partners.

  • Economics and University Partnerships
    Economics and University Partnerships

    The Iowa City Press Citizen recently published an opinion piece that was a précis of my recent Iowa City Chamber of Commerce after dinner speech.

  • Deferred Maintenance on the Future
    Deferred Maintenance on the Future

    Over-worked and sleep-deprived researchers are steering many of our vehicles of discovery on balding tires across potholed roads. Put more bluntly, we are struggling to sustain appropriate investments in basic research.

  • Dreaming Things That Never Were
    Dreaming Things That Never Were

    You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?

  • A Conversation on Designing the Future
    A Conversation on Designing the Future

    SF author Bruce Sterling and I recently had a public conversation about the future. I offered some advice to the students in the audience. 1. Hang out with people not like yourself. 2. Take some risks. 3. Make new and original mistakes.