Review: Closing the Innovation Gap

Judy Estrin is worried about the innovation gap that's developed in America. And if all her information is right, she has reason to be.

Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy examines the macro-level system necessary to support innovation as well as the company-level environment that supports good innovation. Estrin, a Silicon Valley veteran with plenty of successes behind her (and lots more where that came from still in front of her), explores what's necessary for innovation to happen, and rounds up her professional friends and colleagues whose own experiences bolster her main points.

Her discussions of corporate support for innovation are particularly useful for those of us who are leading Creatives. Our work is all about innovation, and if we don't find a way to foster that, we're out of business. Many of her specifics are more suited to large corporations -- Google comes to mind -- but the principles are useful for businesses of all sizes. And if you're a small firm now, but hoping to become a big one, this gives you an idea of how to shape that growth. Estrin makes the point a few times that the days of coming up with an idea in your garage and making billions of dollars are pretty much over. A more formal structure, with more people of diverse backgrounds, seems to be more important now than ever. With the ideas presented here, leaders are better able to design the kind of environment needed to foster innovation.

The portions of the book dealing with the innovation "ecosystem" give leaders an idea of where their Creatives are coming from and how it might be more difficult to find them in the future. She talks about such things as education, cultural attitudes toward science and engineering, funding for the arts, financial support for basic research, corporate and academic preferences for short-term rather than long-term results, and the broader need for instant gratification rather than a longer focus that has gripped the country in recent years. These sections of the book offer leaders a better understanding of what's needed to support a culture of innovation, with lessons they can apply on a smaller scale in their own firms. While fixing the problems in this ecosystem and closing the innovation gap might seem beyond the abilities of small businesses, there are some efforts that smaller firms can make, and if nothing else, leaders can identify big-picture problems and try to work around them.

Unlike many authors today, Estrin doesn't point to 9/11 as THE reason for current problems...innovation was on a downhill slide as early as the 1980s, when talented American college students started seeing careers in finance as preferable to science and engineering, and the creation of wealth became more important than the creation of the actual ideas and inventions that lead to wealth. But she agrees that 9/11 hurt, in part by shocking the US economy, but also by leading to stricter immigration practices that made it tougher for foreign students to come to the US and stay after graduating. In days of old, many of these students would come to the US and then elect to stay after finishing their degrees. These days, though, between the difficulty of getting student and work visas, combined with emerging opportunities in their home countries, even those who do still come to the US often plan to return home afterwards. I've seen examples of this myself. When I was pursuing my PhD in the early 2000s we had 4 Chinese students in my cohort, all of whom returned home. While teaching in Singapore this year I had two students, one Indonesian and one Chinese, who plan to go to the US to pursue their PhD, then return home to bring that knowledge back to their countries. We can probably all find examples of this in our own experience.

Estrin's writing style is very nice and easy to follow. She jumps around from executive to executive, but following the identity of all the speakers isn't important; following what they say is. Her political views come through strongly at a few points, and if you're of the opposing view, that might get in the way of your appreciation for her message, but it shouldn't. Closing the Innovation Gap provides an important wake up call for a country that isn't used to being second-best, and offers some good ideas for avoiding that fate.