In case you missed it, you can watch the CNN GPS special, "Restoring the American Dream: How to Innovate" here online.
I talk to the following innovation experts:
- Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt
- The head of the U.S. military’s crack team of innovators, Dr. Regina Dugan
- Author, Steven Johnson
- Economist Paul Romer
- Venture capitalist Len Baker
- And innovation maven John Kao
Watch the special above, and then check out our new “Global Innovation Showcase” online with the New America Foundation. We are featuring the big ideas, trends and inventions that shape our world – and change how we play, do business and even think.
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Hey can you investigate how Singapore has such low personal and corporate taxes still manage to balance its books and have 16% GDP growth in 2011. What can the US use? What won't work? What would be a good mix for the US?
Aristotle,
Singapore gets its most money (my opinion) through other taxes like GST and COE. For instance, a Toyota Yaris 2008 would cost about AUD20,000 (I live in Australia) but SGD50,000 in Singapore. SIngapore relies alot on service businesses, financial investments and education. Singapore's NUS is one of the top 30 universities in this world. And as what Kao said, they have envisaged on how SIngapore could become a portal for life sciences and they built biopolis way way ahead. They made sure most of their brilliant students dont just become doctors and lawyers. They channel some good ones into biotech. Alot more i can say...
Ajeetha
India & China have been cradle of civilisation, spritual & Scientific knowledge for time immemrial. Most of the todays scientific developments have been derived from those ancient knowledge which European colonisers stole & copied and applied to commercial benefit.Just a petty example that in China & India opium & marijuana was used as medical values while British/ Americans & other europeans commercialised it to today's epidemic and killing machine
Singapore Asians are honest & save While Americans being economic settlers in Americas are greedy & war mongers. To be like singaporeans, Americans have to change their attitude to life & doing business alike. You cant rely on only creating wars to fund the US war economy. WWII made American Military Establishment all powerful & it controlled all US Congressman through Lobbyists.
Singaporeans are hard working, honest & compulsive savers while Americans are only thinking of riches before working, dishonest in their personal & business dealing and like to borrow from others to spend beyond their means. And if Americans cant earn in honest way they go for drugs,gun running & war creations by creating Terrorists & tyrants. It is not poor American's fault but the Lobbyist controlled US politicians who take campaign funds(bribes) & have to pay back to their donors. For example, few million Jews have bought the US congress to do its bidding.
Fareed....I am a huge fan of you and the show, and watch every week. I was, however, extremely disappointed in the addition of Ann Coulter to your panel last week. Ms. Coulter has proven time and time again that she is neither an intellectual, nor an open minded individual, and instead is simply a biased, hack.
I watch your show over all others because I can expect unbiased, informed, intelligent discussion of the issues. I may not always agree with a panelists point of view, but I respect the individual and their intellectual insight into the issue. Ann Coulter brings nothing to the table, and quite frankly, "dumbs down" the debate to the point where I don't even want to watch it.
Please do not follow the mistakes of Fox News and MSNBC...I want my news informed, not performed.
Thanks,
Jason
I also watch Fareed's GPS.Fareed is smart but from a intellectual discussions he is converting to Headlines grabbing stories & to a biased opinion of US & Americans
I completely agree with you and your analysis on Ann Coulter. Fareed is becoming a FOXNEWS type unintellectual sex propaganda news show. This is not like Fareed when he started his show in the beginning. Shame on you Fareed for bringing dumb blonde Ann Coulter with racist views on your show. Most Americans have nothing but contempt for this woman.
Justice. Warren Buffet looks upon illegal trades and see how to make it legal. On March 29 2009 Parade publish by Randolph Siegel. Senator Jim Webb asks; What is wrong with our Prisons? 'Either we are the most evil people on earth or we are doing something very wrong.' As June 14, 2011 271 EXONERATED humans @innocenceblog. Many of the social and civil duties that a human has is to be consider innocent before and until prove guilty. The amount of money today that is waste in argument of innocence to guilt, to find out that 'errors' corruption the lack of justice. "The lack of war 'disputes argument' on any place on earth can be use for a Just society."
The Americans might have the advantage that they don't feel the constant pressure on them to succeed like the Chinese do. The Chinese feel the pressure everywhere, at home, in the society and top down from the state. The fear for failure is enormous, as it is a matter of honour. Under these circumstances, they won't be able to invent. Good ideas are around, it needs a clear and untroubled mind to recognise the ideas and turn them into practice. Chinese could be excellent manufacturers but it needs another attitude to be creative.
I think you are wrong on this.Chinese have leaped higher in Scientific knowledge in the last 20 years than US has done in 60 years. Most of the US intellect came after WWII . when educated from other countries migrated to US for better economic future than their own native country. The best thing was that US did not have to pay for their higher education as it was paid by these migrants native Country. If you count, this amounts to $50Trillion brought in by migrants in brain skills.Knowledge is only gained when one is constantly moving & spinning his brain under pressure like everything else in the Cosmos. Americans are behaving like a Lake instead of a flowing river whereby bacteria of fear & barbarism is taking root.
What is wrong with our prisons – to start with public defenders. I would like to point out that the court is now paying some fancy lawyer (at least $$ wise) for Blago because he knows that with a public defender he would definitely go down.- if he cannot afford one the court will appoint one – so how fair is that? So the taxpayers are paying for this man's defense with a somewhat "real" lawyer. Public Defenders seem to only care bout getting to the next case they hope will NOT be in the Public Defenders office. Thus people who are truly innocent or being bamboozled by the prosecution are really NOT getting fair representation. I don't see that we truly care for each other. There is certainly an imbalance here in the US I don't believe i will pass. We do not have a "just society" because even when you are through with serving etc. no matter how much people have changed or one offs things still follow you where you can't work, you can't really go back to school and now you cannot even get an apartment so how do people REALLY move on and contribute to society – so why push for a decent defense. I can see how people would give up. Unfortunately, corruption is everywhere which is part of Blagos defense here in Chicago that the way he was doing things is they politics is. Our way is failing because we do not hold to the original values of the founding fathers – its not really about freedom for us anymore – it hasn't been for a a long long time. I mean back in the 1800s Missouri had a law on the books to "exterminate" all mormons it was not squashed until 1976 – though we profess "freedom of religion" this group was outlandishly attacked. Now there is reverse discrimination in some areas of whites. We discriminate in education ( ever been to an east side school in chgo? chool day are shorter and shorter – Oh an unions are no more about poor treatment they have become self serving as bad as the businesses they were started for and too egotistical as a whole to see the DAMAGE they are doing. OOPS probably too long.
Dear Fareed, I am a huge fan of yours and this show is a special one. Thanks for picking up on the theme of Innovation. In my own humble way, I evangelize Innovation and implement Transformation. If you ever get a chance, please visit my blog http://subbuiyer.wordpress.com/.
America has been at the forefront of Innovation because no other culture thinks more about packaging customer / consumer experience with differentiation and diversity in their Products, Processes and Services more than the Americans. If at all there is an area that has been lacking, it is the inclusion of Platform to allow customers use at the rate appropriate for them. America has been woefully short on the globalization of its businesses; whether it is the Time and CNN that you are associated with or the Fortune rated businesses such as Coca Cola, Pepsi and McDonald. The essential factor in allowing products, processes and services to be available on a platform requires localization (integration with the local culture) and this is something that America is quite poor at. Even an eloquent statesman like Obama is sometimes found wanting in empathizing with a global view rather than just an American view. However, thanks for making it cleat to your audience that there is a fundamental difference between Invention, Innovation and Improvisation. If there is an area America (and probably the rest of the world as well) needs to capitalize on, it is what John Kao mentioned in your interview with him as developing a "narrative for innovation"; be it at the national level or an enterprise level. Such a narrative would comprise of a well structured and articulated Program (Strategy), Process (Customer Focus in terms of demography and psychography) and Product (Applications). Thus the integration of the three I & P factors would contribute to a continuous IP development and deployment; where the platform would become useful from a global perspective to go through the three stage gate process of Concept, Prototype and Realization; concurrent to life as usual.
The conclusion of the show was the best part where you have absolutely nailed the cause of the decrease in innovation index in America. I empathize with the cause of education in America as I have a personal experience at the K12 level. I had the opportunity to define and design the Performance Management System for Memphis City Schools. I brought it to their attention as well as other stakeholders who are championing the cause of education reform in America that it was not enough to look at just the performance of educators as there were many factors leading into it. I had designed an inclusive process called PM Cube that needs to look at Planning, Preparing, Performing, Measuring, Monitoring and Motivating would be integrated to include the customer universe of Students, Parents, Educators, Administrators & Executives and Management from the districts to deliver quality education. In doing this, it is important to focus on the Human Capital Management of the entire universe as they together in collaboration and not individually can contribute to a higher rate of graduation or developing specific areas of academics which in turn will contribute to the innovation or its rejuvenation and renewal in the American Society.
As usual, thanks for bringing an erudite panel. Glad to hear Len Baker being honest and candid about the shortcomings of the maturity of VC's with respect to their investment capabilities. Thanks once again for raising the bar!
Your piece on Innovation was well done but you left out a key player: the innovator. We saw people who manage innovators, people who study innovators, people who fund innovators and people who educate innovators, but no innovators. As a writer, you were probably the most innovative person in the piece.
Creative people like playwrights, artists, writers and inventors have two key characteristics, courage and persistence. I agree that immigrants often come up with important innovations. Likely they fear failure and are more determined than non-immigrant Americans. Look at your own case. What drove you as an 18 year old immigrant to succeed in America?
In technology startup companies, we divide innovation into two parts, creativity and sustaining. Each of these is done by a different group of people. The creative guys come up with the bright new idea, but it is the sustaining guys that perfect it. The creative guys are not fearful, they can defend their idea against the inevitable criticism. When they get the idea working, the sustaining guys perfect the idea, document it and produce it cheaply.
The creative guys usually aren’t the PhDs that China and India are so good at producing. Doctoral study is usually just the sustaining part of an innovation: perfect or investigate some creative idea your advisor had. It shows you have the tenacity to take on a long project rather than being creative. Few of the best innovators I’ve known have PhDs. That’s not to say that education is not important – you need to know what you’re talking about – but education itself is not creativity.
I think Google’s 20% time is on the right track by removing fear from creativity. Courage isn’t a trainable skill but encouraging bold beginnings can be very helpful. In understanding creativity, we have expressions like “thinking out of the box.” Why don’t people think out of the box? Because we’re afraid of criticism. Asians have an expression, “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. They are culturally admonished for being creative. Although many of the biggest inventions of the last two millennium were Chinese, they only became common place when Westerners got them.
As Americans we are taught to think for ourselves, yet we are losing the very skills that let us succeed. We have become fat and lazy with little courage to create new innovations and little persistence to follow through on those seeds of ideas. Meanwhile Asians are shedding their fears about creativity, the newer generation having been steeped with Western ideas.
Please, please, please do not bring Ann Coulter on the show anymore! GPS is so much better than any of the other talk shows specifically because of the high level of its discourse. While discussions are lively and participants have strong opinions, one always has the impression that panel members are thoughtful and respect the view points of others on the panel. Ann Coulter has none of these qualities. As could be predicted, the discussion quickly decayed into a gabfest in which several people are all trying to talk over each other, so the viewer has no idea of what anyone is saying...except for the fact that the statements being made are so simplistic (i.e., pure partisan ideology), so that the viewers knows what is being said without hearing the words, because it has all been said thousand of times before. In which case, there is no point in watching the show at all, because it has become so predictable. I also noticed that Fareed, who usually keeps an appropriately tight rein on the discussion, this time stayed mostly in the background and made little attempt to impose any order. This is a terrible development for an excellent show. I hope it never happens again!
DARPA is way to go. innovation cant do with bureaucry or any kind of such thing. political/nationalist rhetorical apart FREE MIND/WILL bring innovation.humans have brain very distinct to produce it.
will look for more of your views missed few i know
some after
Fareed,
Just finished watching your show on innovation and was most impressed. You mentioned education as the way to reach young people to get the US back on course. You might be interested in my website, theamericanrevolutionnow.org, for a different take on education and a way to improve it. Don't let the name fool you as I'm middle of the road and use common sense to arrive at my solutions. Hope you get a chance to look at it.
Aaron Rosen
President, The American Revolution Now
I always felt that your show is the most intelligent and educational one hour on the U.S. television in many-many years. Now I feel that you have brought down the standard of Panelists, and consequently the show, with the inclusion of some one like Ann Coulter. Hope you are not selling out to become a part of the growing list of pseudo-intellectuals and the Larry Kings taking over the cable/satellite news, and abdicating the position of a thoughtful and futuristic journalist who can get the likes of Chinese PM, Henry Kissinger, and the long list of very respected dignitaries around the world to share their thoughts and plans on your show. Hope I don't see such an abdication of responsibility from you in your future shows.
Fareed, you asked what three amendments I would make to the constitution; here they are.
1. Make corporate lobbying a capital crime. 2. All potential actions by corporations must be vetted first to make sure that they do NOT adversely effect the environment and the biosphere. 3. The concept of ownership of corporations must be changed from the narrow financial interests of shareholders to the wider interest of the population, the environment and biosphere. See item 2.
Thanks for the only show on CNN and main stream media worth watching.
3 Amendments I would recommend:
1. Eliminate the electoral college.
2. Lobbyist cannot give money to elected officials or their campaigns.
3. Business are different from individuals and cannot contribute to elected officials or their campaigns.
Yes, Ted. Let's get on with it (while we still can!)
The commentator you interviewed today seemed to be an apologist for the Syrian regime. He talked of the protestors but did not talk about the murderous actions of the Syrian government and security forces in killing innocents and detaining and torturing thousands. His conclusion was that the Syrian regime would survive and that opposition was not of the level of Egypt and other countries. I am sure his exit and entry were quite easy as he stated since his views were not contrary to those epoused by the government's propaganda machine.
We live in a republic, not a democracy. The Electoral College is part of the genius of our political system. The US House of Representatives represent the population (not reported by Zakaria in his comments) whereas the US Senate represents the great diversity of our country (as expressed by the Woody Guthrie song, “This Land Is Your Land”).
Fareed, great show. The only intelligent show that I can't wait to watch. You have very interesting guests, and some are never seen in other shows. I just wanted to suggest you having Miko Peled on your show. He is a very interesting person with a very different perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has an interesting background, and speaks a lot of sense. He has written a book called "the General's son". He should be a very unusual guest on your show.
The word 'Innovation' needs to be better defined up front.
From your material, one would think it means only 'change that is profitable'. That which preceeds 'profitability' could be called 'discovery', but it is also called invention.
I am an innovator (inventor) who got his start on that morning in October, 1957; I heard the beeps of Sputnik on the kitchen radio when I came down for breakfast.
I'll tell you some of what "This Dog Saw", and you (as a newsman) can connect the dots, if you want to.
That week I wrote a letter to the "US Space Office, Washington, D.C." asking how to be part of 'THIS' space program. I was too young to care whether there even WAS such an office: but, I new at once (in a modern parlance) this new effort would have 'legs'!
I was poor, but 12 years later I earned a PhD in Physics from a prestigous grad school (that had sheltered me from Vietnam). I then worked at various DoD sponsored R&D programs at Hughes Aircraft Company for 27 years. I saw microelectronics, digital and microwave technologies sprout up all around me. Some commercial companies (Fairchild and National Semi. to name only two) but ALL the funding was Government Money. (I'm sure that the programs weren't started or run by financiers, or Wall St.) I think the mission was an outgrowth of naked strategic military fear, something one could almost taste. There's nothing remotely like that, today!) This money built AND populated our grad schools. (You can research how much was spent, and where it came from. It was not a Walmart success story!)
I learned that it is hugely important what DoD (DARPA) bought with the money they spent. They purposely challenged technologists to extend the current limits by at least 10X, and then 10X, again. This was not to make money, but instead to see what happened and redefine the limits ( also to gauge what the 'other side' might possible have). As a timely example, think of how the Japanese nuclear plants were designed to withstand tsunamis: mostly a cerebral conjecture-based process. DoD paid paid in effect to 'MAKE tsunamis' in the lab; (to go, "Where no man has gone before", and deal with what actually happens). This process spawned invention and refinements!
The new technologies became sufficiently refined to use commercially, and high tech based industry exploded.
By the time the Berlin Wall came down, American taste for this kind of investment and invention had dried up. Hughes was bought by GM. The SunRacer was a sophisticated electric car developed for GM by Hughes Research Labs. As was told in "Who Killed the Electric Car", GM destroyed all it's electric vehicles a short time later. I was told by a Delco executive (to whom I was pitching a research effort) that GM, "Doesn't do R&D. We watch what comes out of Japan, and if the American consumer likes it, we build it cheaper!"
GM broke up Hughes and thereupon distributed significant profits from the financial transactions to their shareholders. Perhaps, they were no longer really a 'Car Company' at that time. It seems that GM had to go bankrupt before they could invest in and innovate over to electric cars!
Two final questions:
1) What incentives could possibly exist in America, today, for a kid to feel secure in spending 12 years in technical higher education only to teach or perhaps run test equipment on a boring project in some big corporate lab?
2) What could possibly motivate a successful company (say like Exxon, or Unocal) to really push to invent alternative energy solutions (when success might result in 'goring their own ox')?
I believe that we have gotten very rich too quickly, and we have sequestered (not invested) the profits. We will continue to do so.
We can still make money by tweaking, and that has to be good enough because there's taste for risk, and no money in discovery!
Sorry. I meant to say, "There's NO taste for risk".
Lastly, if America could only find a market for Ideologs, we would instantly regain our world economic dominance!
Biggest problem in education in America is JetParents. They raising their kids with mantra “believe you could do everything”, but never ask their children “how you will pay your bills if you go this way”. They using slogan “follow your dreams but never mention that to achieve the dream you should work 10000 hours”. The simple solution is direct connection for those parents between their bills and what their children will do in life. Help to finance the higher education for kids who doing math, science , engineering and finding the descent jobs after college graduation and let the JetParents pay the full bill for college education in Art&Crafts.
Dear Fareed:
An Actual Proposal to Make America Great Again
A simple shift in perspective will clear away much of the current mess not just in education but also in the current physical and emotional struggles of individuals, groups and countries.
When we try to understand and fix the mess in education we keep going back to trying to improve how we teach subjects like math and science. Actually our math and science education is well set and the mess lies elsewhere. It is due to lack of even a single subject that teaches emotional intelligence.
We are proposing a plan to create text books for a new subject that teaches emotional intelligence; which at the super mature stage is wisdom. We cannot teach wisdom directly because wisdom is the symptom of the pure self. Again ignorance is a symptom of an impure self and treating the symptom does not cure the disease.
We must wake up to the fact that wisdom is an innate property of the pure self. It is a secondary entity and so when we try to teach wisdom it is like trying to retool the fragrance of a flower! In order to improve the fragrance of a flower we need to nurture the plant. Our focus has to be on improving the quality of the I/self/mind/consciousness.
I/self/mind/consciousness are all one and the same entity or at least so closely compounded that educating any one will educate them all and improving and changing any one of them will improve and change them all. The litmus test of the quality of each and every one of these is selflessness. By nurturing and cultivating selflessness we will be nurturing and cultivating the pure self.
Wisdom is selflessness and selflessness can be taught. We have thousands of books on wisdom where selflessness is mentioned as one of the attributes of wisdom. We must wake up to the fact that selflessness is the power that creates wisdom and each and every attribute of wisdom is selflessness or at least every one of the attributes of wisdom is powered by selflessness. Selflessness is the currency of a pure life/self/I/mind/consciousness and even pure happiness.
We have not only figured out how to teach wisdom we have this whole wisdom industry that will generate wisdom education by creating text books, with exercises and lessons, training for teachers and parents, and 'pure happiness' counselors etc. Wisdom coaching for adults, groups and countries, toys that teach wisdom, wisdom computer games, comic books, children stories, sitcoms, TV talk shows, movies and Wisdom Theme Parks, Wisdom Hall of Fame for every school, village, city, country and the world...We can create this wisdom industry in every country and use the income to lift the country out of poverty of resources of economics as well as the poverty of the mind.
the viewers knows what is being said without hearing the words, because it has all been said thousand of times before. In which case, there is no point in watching the show at all, The SunRacer was a sophisticated electric car developed for GM by Hughes Research Labs. As was told in "Who Killed the Electric Car", GM destroyed all it's electric vehicles a short time later.
Why is the US suspicious of China? Why does Fareed always poke fun on the Chinese as copy cats, where as most current US technology was as a result of stolen German scientific research and technology after the second world war. Why are you now accusing China of doing the same thing the US and Russia did after the fall of Hitler's Germany by stealing Hitler's scientists to build the US space program. Fareed and the US must understand that what goes around
comes around.
You had Ann Coulter on your show Fareed?. I thought your show, unlike others was a serious intellectual enterprise not a pop mickey mouse production. I have reccommended your show to so many people then you provide Ann Coulter?
To give this woman a serous platform is a shame on you and your production company. Not only is it a waste of time but an insult.
To restore the American Dream, we have to break what Karl Marx has correctly predicted about capitalism, that it is self defeating, self distructing especially during the times of recession or depression (as now) where no one wants to spend.
As Mr. Zakaria correctly points out, we need to make huge investments in INNOVATION to get us out of this mess. GRANTS, not loans are needed by Startup companies with innovative products that are needed worldwide. These Startups must be awarded Grants to spur hiring immediately, but Only If they vow to keep jobs within the USA.
Here is an example of such a patriotic startup with a vital innovation that can sustain well-paying American jobs for decades: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csa459eSZr8
But don't take my word for it. Listen to the Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship:
Job Growth in U.S. Driven Entirely by Startups, According to Kauffman Foundation Study
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/u-s-job-growth-driven-entirely-by-start...
"When it comes to U.S. job growth, startup companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing."
I believe that the last premise = education is the answer to the disparity between innovation jobs (50,000 at apple) and manufacturing jobs (1,000,000 apple mfg jobs in China) is incorrect. India and China have larger populations than the US and produce more high achievers (because of their larger population base). Where manufacturing jobs are sourced needs to become a matter of will. Or at least be supported by government policies that realize the danger of allowing an entire manufacturing economy to be outsourced. There is a national cost to keeping 5% of the jobs and giving away 95% of the jobs. Whose citizens will be employed?