Institute For The Future

IFTF Joins A New Innovation Policy Roundtable in DC

I've been thinking about and blogging about innovation here for the better part of a year, as part of my ongoing research looking at how emerging models for scientific research and technological innovation intersects with economic development.

 

On April 10, I was invited to join the National Foreign Trade Council's Global Innovation Forum Brain Trust, "a project of the to create a greater understanding of the innovation ecosystem – the creation, trade and employment of innovation – and the foundations upon which this system is built to enable effective solutions to global challenges and improve the lives of workers, families and communities around the world." The Brain Trust announcement coincided with the Global Innovation Forum's first public event, "Securing America’s Future: Innovation Jobs for the Middle Class", held at Howard University. The conference keynote was also the first public of recently appointed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, Texas, and now President Obama's chief negotiator for all trade deals.

 

I find it an interesting appointment, because IFTF has been a strident advocate of commons-based alternatives to intellectual property, while NFTC's - a lobbying coalition of Fortune 500 companies - biggest issue right now is strengthening enforcement of global intellectual property accords.

 

I've worked with lobbying groups like NFTC before. In 2008, IFTF partnered with the Global Environmental Management Initiative to release a forecast map on the future of sustainability (which GEMI has made available as a free download). While it's often frustrating to sit at the same table with people who are actively working against what you think is the right strategy (both in public policy as well as business), the key point is that you are at the same table. Working with these groups has provided me the opportunity to engage business leaders on this important issues, and I hope inform their thinking in a positive way.

 

I'm looking forward to this as a learning opportunity too. I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of the biotech and biomedical sectors, and what structures need to be put in place for the U.S. to secure leadership in this most important of future industries for the next 50 years. Re-reading Gary Pisano's scathing 2006 indictment of biotech's innovation failures, Science Business, I'm hoping that the Global Innovation Forum will provide a platform to draw attention to the way excessive patenting is blocking innovation in many areas of biotech, and how more open solutions can be crafted through the consensus of policy makers, businesspeople and universities. Especially as the NIH pumps some $10 billion in stimulus money into biomedical research and aggressively pursues open access publishing of research, we need to upgrade the way we transfer technology to the private sector so that we really do create "innovation jobs" as the GIF calls them.