A new ITIF report makes a compelling case that expanding the federal research and development tax credit would help create 162,000 jobs in the near term and enhance the nation’s long-term economic competitiveness.

A new report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute, Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant, is the first to thoroughly benchmark the clean energy competitiveness in four nations: China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The report analyzes clean energy investments and policy support for research, manufacturing, and domestic demand, with a particular focus on six key technologies: wind, solar, nuclear, carbon capture and storage, hybrid and electric vehicles and advanced batteries, and high speed rail.

Although once offering the most generous R&D tax credit in the world, the United States now ranks 17th out of the 30 OECD countries.

The ideal fiscal stimulus measure not only creates jobs and drives economic activity in the short run but also boosts quality of life and economic growth in the medium and long run. Support for scientific research in the stimulus package accomplishes both goals. In this report, ITIF finds that spurring an additional $20 billion investment in our national research infrastructure will create or retain approximately 402,000 American jobs for one year.

Many forward-thinking countries have made innovation-led economic development a centerpiece of their national economic strategies during the past decade. While many nations have taken the innovation challenge to heart and put in place a host of policies to spur innovation, the United States has done little, consequently falling behind in innovation policies and risking falling behind in innovation performance as well. This article compares U.S. innovation policy to that of other leading industrialized countries across five topic areas: programs to establish civilian technology and innovation promotion agencies; services innovation initiatives; national levels of R&D funding; tax incentives for research and development; and policies regarding high-skill immigration.

Please join us for an event to discuss how recent theoretical and empirical work has called into question the core tenants of the neo-classical doctrine—that markets are stable, are driven by rational actors responding solely to price signals, and require little role for government in driving growth. Indeed, this new work, much of it based in the fields of behavioral economics and complexity theory, have shown that economic systems act less like well-structured systems in equilibrium and more like chaotic, complex systems whose outcomes are unstable and can vary widely based on seemingly minor changes.

Going Green Means Going R&D: The only way to solve the global warming problem is through support of a dramatically expanded and improved CO2 reduction R&D program

ITIF hosted a breakfast forum on Tuesday, October 14th with Dr. Erica Fuchs, Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Fuchs discussed the results of a new study examining the role of the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency (DARPA) between 1992 and the present on innovation in the United States.

ITIF will host a breakfast forum with Dr. Gregory Tassey to discuss his new book The Technology Imperative and how national technological investments can spur economic growth.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama’s campaigns increasingly recognize the central role that science, technology, and innovation play in economic growth and have developed specific policy positions on these issues. This ITIF policy brief compares and assess the candidates’ technology and innovation policies across a number of specific issues areas, including: taxes, R&D funding, broadband and telecommunications, e-government, digital transformation, education and workforce development, trade, patent and intellectual property, and energy and the environment.

In RAND’s Rose-Colored Glasses: How RAND’s Report on U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology Gets it Wrong, ITIF presents a detailed critique of the recent RAND report showing that in contrast to RAND’s rosy assessment, America’s lead on a number of key S&T indicators is eroding rapidly, where not vanishing entirely.

In this report, ITIF finds that the nature of the U.S. innovation system has changed dramatically over the course of the last 40 years. Using an innovative research method, UC Davis scholars Fred Block and Mathew Keller analyze a sample of innovations recognized by R&D Magazine as being among the top 100 innovations of the year over the last four decades.

There is disturbing evidence that America’s innovation lead is shrinking. Moreover, expanded support for basic research and science education, while important, will not be enough to respond to this challenge. Without a more robust, targeted, and explicit federal innovation policy, U.S. competitiveness will continue to slip and economic growth will lag. In a new report, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program argue that a critical step in that direction is the establishment of a National Innovation Foundation – a nimble, lean and collaborative entity devoted to supporting firms and other organizations in their innovative activities.

See video and presentation slides from recent ITIF Forum, featuring Carnegie Melon Professor Bill Hefley, editor of the new book Service Science, Management and Engineering: Education for the 21st Century. Dr. Hefley makes the case that it is time to bring the same scientific rigor to services that has long been applied to manufacturing.

Rob Atkinson's article in ScienceProgress about the importance of innovation for meeting the significant new challenges facing this country. The article discusses policies that the United States should adopt to promote innovation.

ITIF President Rob Atkinson’s testimony about globalization of R&D and policy responses, before the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation.

Addressing America’s competitiveness challenge will require policies that do more than boost the supply of innovation resources (e.g., improving education and increasing funding for research); they must also spur demand by companies to locate more of their innovation-based production in the United States. And a key tool for accomplishing this is an expanded R&D tax credit. If the U.S. is to remain the world’s preeminent location for technological innovation (and the high paying jobs that result), Congress will need to significantly expand the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit. In a new report, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation outlines several steps Congress should take to strengthen the credit.

In the Winter issue of Issues in Science and Technology , Rob Atkinson argues that current proposals to stimulate U.S. competitiveness are necessary but not sufficient to meet the challenges posed by a rapidly evolving global economy and the aggressive policies of other nations. He makes a number of specific policy proposals, organized into four areas: 1) work to create a global trade regime based on markets, not mercantilism; 2) overhaul the corporate tax code to spur innovation; 3) create new research partnerships; and 4) make digital transformation of the economy within 10 years a national goal.

The Research and Experimentation Tax Credit can play an important role in ensuring that the United States remains an attractive location for global companies to conduct research. Not only does the credit spur the retention and attraction of investment in R&D in the United States, new scholarly research shows convincingly that the credit is an effective tool for stimulating additional research, which in turn leads to faster economic growth. However, while the United States had the distinction of providing the most generous tax treatment of R&D of all OECD nations in the early 1990s, by 2004 we had dropped to 17th most generous.