Anyone interested in innovation needs to pay attention to the Council on Competitiveness. Although I’m not sure how influential this group of heavyweight leaders of business and academia will be, they do say the right stuff:

For the past 25 years, we have optimized our organizations for efficiency and quality. Over the next quarter century, we must optimize our entire society for innovation.

The members of this council include the CEOs of IBM, American Airlines, Verizon, Amgen, GM and Pepsico as well as the presidents of Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Texas A&M, and U.Michigan. They have just issued a 68-page report called Innovate America. I haven’t had time to read it, but I did observe that it ends with four goals:

1. Create a national consensus on supporting innovation growth strategies (They do have recommendations on how to execute this idea.)
2. Create a 21st century intellectual property regime (agreeing the current system is broken.)
3. Strengthen America’s manufacturing capacity (that sounds like political pandering.)
4. Build 21st century innovation infrastructure and use healthcare as a test bed. (Good idea.)

I suspect most of us haven’t had time to read and evaluate it, but I’d love to hear comments from anybody who has.