Editorial Review:
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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Nothing Innovative About this Book  2008-05-31
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.
Kao, a skilled and knowledgeable writer, examines a imited set of U.S. policy problems  2008-04-15
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).
Innovating a New Future  2008-03-16
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"
Innovating in what has become a "flat" global marketplace 2008-01-23
The title of Thomas Friedman's most recently published book, The World Is Flat, is explained by the author in the Introduction: his use of the word "flat" refers to "the flattening forces [that] are empowering more and more individuals today to reach further, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before...to connect, compete, and collaborate" innovatively. John Kao has these same forces in mind when suggesting that America is losing its innovative edge in the global marketplace. "Innovation has become the new currency of global competition as one country after another races toward a new high ground where the capacity for innovation is viewed as a hallmark of national success."
Meanwhile, John Kao asserts that in the United States, "our national capacity for innovation is eroding, with deeply troubling implications for our future...In tomorrow's world, even more than today's, innovation will be the engine of progress. So unless we move to rectify this dismal situation, the United States cannot hope to remain a leader. What's at stake is nothing less than the future prosperity and security of our nation...While our competitor nations focus on educating and training engineers and inventors, our schools are turning out youngsters who are better consumers than they are creators."
What to do? Kao proposes that the United States become an "innovation nation" by making a major commitment of resources, both human and financial, to rejuvenate our innovation age. "And the obvious first step is simply to acknowledge the challenges we face at a national level. After which we must develop a compelling vision and a blueprint for action that will reinvent the way we educate our children, marshal our resources, pursue our research projects, communicate and share our discoveries, and conduct ourselves in the world community."
After first identifying the "what," Kao devotes the bulk of his attention to the "how" of achieving these and other objectives. He cites examples in the past when innovation in the U.S. unequalled (e.g. the Manhattan Project, Lockheed's "Skunk Works," and the U.S. space program's "Project Apollo") as well as examples of successful innovation initiatives in other countries, notably in China and India (of course) but also in Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Taiwan. There is indeed what Kao characterizes as "the new geography of innovation" in a world that Friedman describes as "flat."
Kao examines the four principal driving factors behind this "global evolution," noting that the globalization of innovation and of the capital to fund it "are, in my estimation, great positives overall for both the United States and the rest of the world. But the United States must begin ratcheting up its own innovation capacity to stay ahead of the curve."
To me, one of Kao's most interesting ideas is what he calls an "Information Hub" such as the one in San Diego that demonstrates "how talent, investment, and creativity flow to places whose culture encourages the pioneer spirit, the search for open spaces, and the hunger to express itself as much by creating value in a place as through the ideas and ventures that are generated by it."
Kao proposes a BHAG for the United States (Big Hairy Audacious Goal is a term introduced by Jim Collins): to establish twenty Innovation Hubs, each devoted to solving one "wicked" problem (e.g. climate change, environmental degradation, communicable diseases, energy sufficiency, water quality and sufficiency), with initial funding of at least $20 billion. One day, he hopes, "the catalytic nature of diversity and the power of innovation on a planetary basis will unleash the full potential of human beings to better themselves and to create a world well worth living in."
Others may perhaps disagree with Kao's estimate of the nature and extent of the challenges that the United States currently faces. They may also disagree with the details of the response to those challenges that Kao recommends. However, there seems to be little doubt that innovation has not as yet become "the new currency" of U.S. participation in global competition nor is capacity for innovation as yet viewed as a "hallmark" of its national success. I agree with Kao that what's now at stake is "nothing less than the future prosperity and security of our nation."
Those who share my regard for this book are urged to check out Friedman's aforementioned book as well as Competing in a Flat World co-authored by Victor Fung, William Fung, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind. Also, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, Henry Chesbrough's Open Innovation and his more recent Open Business Models, and Seeing What's Next co-authored by Clayton Christensen, Scott Anthony, and Erik Roth.
Excellent book! 2007-12-30
As an educator, I found Dr. Kao's discussion on education, and the lack of innovation therein, to be right on target. Innovation starts with our children!
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