What an interesting question! Getting to an answer requires setting aside ALL ideology and doing a comparative study, across history and national boundaries, on the phenomenon of technological leadership.
Who knows, for instance, how the internet was developed? By Al Gore over a latte, right! That's top down. Do the following span some dimension of interest: Manhattan project Lanl's work on Energy NSF 's call for proposals on, say, Dynamical Systems. Ordinary NSF Research Grants The human genome project Ordinary professors fooling around in their laboratories. Somebody could make a lot of money writing a book using these as chapter heads. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: Jochen Fromm <[email protected]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 2/13/2010 8:22:32 AM > Subject: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation > > In a recent washingtonpost.com article named > "Erasing our innovation deficit" ( http://bit.ly/cG6vGW ) > Eric Schmidt said > > "We have been world leaders in [technological] > innovation for generations. It has driven our > economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. > [..] We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of > the 20th century, when big investments in the military > and NASA spun off to the wider economy." > > Do you agree? What kind of approach does the > USA need to return to old strength? > > -J. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
