A Presidential Nod

January 27, 2011 By Aminda

U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address has been getting plenty of attention for its emphasis on innovation.

Public affairs Journal, The New Republic, reports; Obama placed innovation at the center of his narrative, and promoted technology innovation (especially clean energy innovation) as the central imperative of national economic renewal. But while he has emphasized the importance of invention in the past, he has never done it as explicitly and forcefully as he did last night before a prime time national TV audience in a year of tepid recovery, 9 percent unemployment, and fears of lost national mojo.

This was different from the past, in which presidents have tended to either ignore innovation or tick it off as one of many programmatic topics. Even for Obama, last night’s rhetoric was new.

Fast Company's State of the Union word cloud
Fast Company

President Obama told Congress on Tuesday night that he wants to reorganize the federal government to make it serve a more competitive nation while also simplifying the tax code, doubling exports in three years and investing in free enterprise that drives innovation, said a Fox News report.

From both within and out of the field of innovation, much of the response was skeptical.

“It is clear, and frustrates me to no end, that my government talks a lot about innovation but still does not understand how to foster it. Innovation in America, especially in the short term, is not achieved by pumping huge sums of money into government-sponsored research and development efforts.” Wrote Braden Kelley, author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

Kelly also pointed out that despite the buzz, Fast Company’s word cloud text analysis tool shows that in actuality, Obama was talking about “people”.

An MSNBC article writes that “as with his call for “investment” in innovation, the president offered no specifics of how he and Congress might solve problems like that, promising instead that he would develop and offer a proposal “in the coming months.”

What do you think of President Obama’s remarks and plan?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address has been getting plenty of attention for its emphasis on innovation.


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