PhillyInc: Encouraging, unleashing innovation is complicated

Every politician running for office has been singing the praises of innovation, that force on which the future of America itself depends. If only we could unleash innovation, they say, jobs and prosperity would gush forth.

If only it were as easy as they make it sound.

Eastman Kodak Co. was plenty innovative in its day, but it's what the iconic company did (or didn't do) with those great ideas that has brought it to its current cash-poor state.

In fact, encouraging innovation and making the U.S. economy more competitive is quite complicated and "does not lend itself to sound bites," said Stephen S. Tang, president and chief executive officer of the University City Science Center in West Philadelphia.

I talked with Tang as he drove back Friday afternoon from Washington, following the release of a 160-page report by the U.S. Department of Commerce about the nation's "innovative capacity."

He was one of 15 members of an "Innovation Advisory Board" that met twice last year to supply input for a policy paper that offers no new ideas to reversing the United States' slide among global rankings of competitiveness.

Here's just one of the 10 policy proposals: Enhance and extend the R&D tax credit. Haven't heard that one before, right?

Asked what he learned from the process, Tang said: "The line between policy and politics is very fine."

During a streaming videoconference about what backers call the "competes" report, senior Commerce Department officials were asked a couple of questions about U.S. immigration policies - a topic not covered in the report.

Tang said that many great American entrepreneurs were immigrants, but that U.S. immigration policy has become such a polarizing issue. Industry and academia face real problems attracting and retaining the world's best scientists and engineers.

Natalia Olson-Urtecho, president and CEO of the clean-tech consulting firm EG L.L.C., was a second Philadelphia member on the advisory board, whose members also included Irwin Mark Jacobs, cofounder of Qualcomm Inc., and Arthur D. Levinson, chairman of Genentech Inc. and Apple Inc.

Olson-Urtecho said the panel visited federal labs in Boulder, Colo., and she was struck by the frustration expressed by government scientists "doing amazing things" who found it "really hard to take them to market."