"TRAJECTORIES, INFLECTIONS, AND INNOVATION: TRENDS
IN SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY"
Acting Deputy Director
Chief Operating Officer
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
The Technology Business and Government
University of Pennsylvania
April 14, 1999
(As prepared for delivery)
I am delighted to be here and honored by the invitation
to deliver The Technology, Business, and Government
Distinguished Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
The old cliche, "home is where the heart is," surely
holds true for me. My heart is always here at this
great and benevolent university. And wherever I go,
it will be "home."
The title of my talk today, Trajectories, Inflections,
and Innovation: Trends in Science, Engineering, and
Technology Policy, is a quirky set of words that
don't link together in a traditional linear way. It
was my intent to assemble some terms that seemed odd
bedfellows. This is to reflect the current trend in
science, engineering, and technology policy, which
is bringing together some unlikely partners in some
Let me spend a moment on each of these terms individually.
The trajectory of science, engineering, and
technology over the last half century has consistently
moved toward greater complexity.
This escalating complexity in all three areas is powering
us to a new eventuality. Increasing complexity
brings you to eventual integration. I will return
to this point later.
The inflections in my title represent the subtle
signals in the larger context around us that we must
read like tea leaves to know where to steer policy
for science, engineering, and technology.
Innovation is the task of breaking the rules
and being rewarded, over and over again.
And policy is a facile term, especially in Washington
where anything becomes a policy if it gets
even peripheral mention on the evening news.
These somewhat irreverent definitions help to make
the point that the new trends in science, engineering,
and technology policy are breaking some old traditions
and some stubborn myths.
As I expand on these ideas, I hope to paint a picture
of a science, engineering, and technology future that
is vibrant, multifaceted, and purposeful.
Let us begin with policy itself. The objective of policy
is to move us toward our desired goals. The first
task in framing science, engineering, and technology
policy is to articulate what goals we expect them
to move us toward.
It is easy, but not very instructive, to say
that, as a nation, we want the United States to be
preeminent in the world in science, engineering, and
technology. During the four decades of the Cold War,
we wanted our science and engineering preeminence
to keep the free world safe from the Soviets.
Other benefits, especially economic, sprang from our
national security related research and development,
but the process traveled mostly in a linear fashion
through the defense tunnel.
In fact, those same national security goals drove the
building of our national highway system and the ARPAnet,
the predecessor of the Internet.
What we really want post-Cold War is for our
science and engineering to make the nation economically
preeminent and to benefit global society in general.
We are in essence asking for different outcomes from
our science, engineering, and technology. With this
different goal, the metric of high-powered economic
growth will now measure the results.
And so to repeat, it is easy, but not very instructive,
to say that we want the United States to be preeminent
in the world in science, engineering, and technology.
The prestige of the best science and engineering will
not automatically result in a beneficial "economic
domino effect." Some of that can occur randomly, and
has in the past. But, we all know that the global
economic environment is too intense for randomness.
We need to think strategically and holistically. We
need to learn to read patterns and trends from the
larger context to envision the future. We need to
educate our engineers and scientists beyond their
technical expertise. The best technical training must
be combined with an understanding of how that expertise
fits into the larger societal environment, into our
overriding national goals, and, indeed, into the goals
of other nations.
This may all sound too elementary to discuss in a distinguished
lecture so let me crystallize it by two vivid examples.
Both have to do with computers and lack of foresight,
two things that go together with surprising regularity.
I know, I'm a Mac user.
Maybe it all began with a comment that is familiar
to all of you. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said
in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe
And recently, Danny Hillis, computer philosopher and
designer, who pioneered the concept of parallel computing,
and in 1996 became the vice president of research
and development at The Walt Disney Company, related
this incident from his past. "I went to my first computer
conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago.
When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else
said, 'Where are they all going to go? It's not like
you need a computer in every doorknob!'"
Years later, Hillis went back to the same hotel. He
noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic
cards you slide into slots in the doors. There was,
indeed, "a computer in every doorknob," as well as
sensors and actuators - and other hardware to make
the software sing.
Danny Hillis may have seen that future for microprocessors
but right there in the midst of a computer conference
two decades ago that insight was in short supply.
That's probably why Danny Hillis is now head of R&D
for Walt Disney.
There is an important lesson hidden in both of these
comments, which are far more than just ironic or amusing.
In fact, there is a responsibility here for our universities.
Part of the explanation for very smart people making,
what in hindsight, are not very insightful comments,
is that, even as prognosticators, we tend to think
of what is in front of us but not what is also around
Each of these quotes tells us of a person who sees
in present time, and likely the present in his own
small corner of society. Neither seemed to speak from
the larger, surrounding context. Neither imagined
that the future could or would be much different from
The future is never easy to "see." But the chances
of having good vision are much better if you understand
the larger context in which you work - the
sector, the society, and even the time in history,
the moment in civilization. Learning to read the larger
context gives you a path for imagining the future.
At a university, we have the opportunity and responsibility
to help students learn how to "see" the larger context
of society and extrapolate good insight from those
pictures to project the future.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan put it this
way, "Critical awareness and the abilities to hypothesize,
to interpret, and to communicate are essential elements
of successful innovation in a conceptual-based economy."
Let me draw a brief outline of the context I would
want to portray. The Cold War ended just over
nine years ago. Since then we have been in a state
of flux, in a period of transition. It has been a
time replete with possible trajectories. We are marching
in a different direction, but in fact, we are not
yet sure of the direction. We must be astute to this
time as a window of opportunity. We must be alert
to its signals.
Here are some indicators of shift and flux. The world
map has been redrawn. The Soviet bloc nations became
independent. The Soviet Union fractured and an independent
Russia stands separate and struggling, but still a
forceful opposition voice, for example, in the Balkans.
East and West Germany are united again.
The Cold War was an organizing principle for foreign
affairs, despite its inherent dangers. The current
situation makes for a much messier world. The objectives
of the NATO Alliance are being debated in a new post-Cold
War Europe. And U.S. foreign policy is clearly adjusting
to very different challenges.
On the economic front, Japan and the Asian Tigers have
experienced severe recession but assuredly present
strong economic competition, as well as partnership,
for the future, as they have proven in the recent
past. There are other "Tigers" emerging in India and
The contagion of economic woes has hit South America,
too. China grows both economically and politically
and may likely eclipse the rest of Asia in the coming
In the United States, we are, for the moment, economically
stronger than we have been in decades. Service workers
predominate in our workforce, and partnerships among
our various sectors - public, private, and academic
- are fashionable and increasingly effective. A new
inter-organizational way of business and academic
life is forming.
The most talented and highly skilled workers in every
country comprise the modern phenomenon of a global
and mobile workforce. They can easily gravitate to
where the best jobs are located. But information technologies
have also made it possible for them to stay home and
yet work abroad.
U.S. colleges and universities are facing information-age
transformations with virtual centers and institutes,
shared infrastructure, and long-distance learning.
The future portends even more.
Despite the dogmatism of the disciplines, science and
engineering are moving distinctly toward interdisciplinarity
at the same time that they become steadily more complex.
And, accountability for publicly funded research is
a now familiar criterion.
Public understanding of science and technology has
permeated the lexicon of the science and engineering
community. However, there is still a great chasm between
"talking the talk" and "walking the walk" in this
realm. All of us must do better.
K through 12 education in science and math is improving,
but not fast enough for an information society that
will be increasingly dependent on those skills. All
sectors - higher education, industry, and government
must assume greater responsibility for achieving our
K through 12 goals.
Young people today will have 7 to 10 inflections in
their career path over a working lifetime. Life-long
education has become a necessity.
Demographic projections indicate a changing America
with Hispanics becoming the most populous minority.
Immigration is projected to become more important
to U.S. population growth than natural increases through
birth and death rates.
In industry, environmental concerns will increasingly
influence product development. And there is likely
to be continuous movement toward sustainable manufacturing,
not just ethically, but imposed by legislation and
regulation. And, in fact, "sustainability" is likely
to become a wealth-creation industry.
This is not necessarily a complete "context" but it
serves as example and as a good beginning. I'm sure
each of you has important additions to my start.
Without having an understanding of the "context" or
"backdrop," we are asking people to act with vision
and foresight while they are handicapped with, what
amounts to, blinders. "Context" is not window dressing
or peripheral knowledge; it is, instead, a set of
clues and guideposts.
I used the term inflections in my quirky title to identify
these guideposts as subtle signals that give direction
and insight to our decisions. We must develop acumen
for such thinking in our students.
We cannot graduate talented engineers and scientists
with supremely specialized expertise that exists in
a vacuum. Our students are passionately driven by
the intricacies of their specialty. In fact, a conversation
among engineers and scientists of varied disciplines
has been likened to a "tower of Babel" where everyone
speaks a different specialized language.
Although disciplinary fields are brimming their boundaries
and oozing into each other, their practitioners do
not speak a common tongue. We don't want to ever quell
their passion but we do want to build bridges for
a common language.
The "tower of Babel" syndrome, coupled with a lack
of "context" that provides for direction and insight,
hobbles our own talent and capability. The good news
is that our continuing efforts to integrate research
and education provide the best opportunities to
promote in our students the skills to develop these
We live in a global environment where new competitors
and partners are emerging like weeds after a spring
rain. The ability to read the subtle signals will
often make the difference between being the industrial
leader or laggard in a field. At the time Thomas Watson
predicted a world market for maybe five computers
there was a lot more lead-time in the global economy
to recoup from such a calculation than there would
be today. Reading the tea leaves is not just for mystics
anymore. It's job one for mentors, managers, and moguls.
Broader insight also brings me to the innovation piece
in our science and technology policy. I cavalierly
described innovation at the start of my remarks as
the task of breaking the rules and being rewarded,
over and over again.
This is true, but let me raise the discussion to a
different plane with a comment by Einstein. He said,
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Imagining is at the heart of innovation. It operates
as a process at two levels here.
First, as we learn to read that larger context which
I have been discussing, imagination allows us to envision
projections of a future from a comprehensive perspective,
and not from what we see just directly in front of
us. Here, imagination has a great deal to do with
integration. The disparate pieces of a context tell
us nothing in isolation, but they tell us many things
in relationship to each other.
Earlier, I described the trajectories of science, engineering,
and technology as moving always to the more complex.
And, this complexity would bring us to eventual integration.
In our expanding knowledge about the universe, the
human mind and body, the cycles of ecosystems, the
patterns of climate, the paths of infectious diseases,
the dynamics of economies, and the perturbations of
global politics, we see repeated evidence of integration
and interrelationships. There seem to be few, if any,
disconnections as we deepen our knowledge.
The second level at which imagination operates is the
one we commonly associate with artists, writers, and
musicians. The term imagination is, more often, exchanged
for creativity here. What it comes down to is being
able to picture a completely new way of seeing or
Our contemporary technique for producing sound, the
compact disc, is a good example of this imagining.
We rename it technological innovation when it occurs
in industry but the CD was a completely new way of
audioization, a totally new type of device. It was
not an improved version of anything already in existence.
The February 20th issue of the Economist magazine included
a major examination of innovation. One of the sidebars
to the text reads, "Innovators break all the rules.
The Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, a hero of
mine, developed a rule-breaking theory of economics
in which he described a "creative destruction" of
The Economist article on Innovation described Schumpeter's
work saying, "[according to Schumpeter] a normal healthy
economy was not one in equilibrium, but one that was
constantly being disrupted by technological innovation.
Disruption is an important characteristic of innovation.
As would be expected, it causes losses in its path
of making gains, creating the dynamism of healthy
economies. In fact, the disruption caused by an innovation
can often bring down a leading manufacturer or even
a whole industry. Transistor technology disrupted
the vacuum-tube industry, HMOs shook the foundation
of the health insurance industry, and the CD killed
the needle in the groove.
As teachers, mentors, and trainers, you will surely
call upon examples close at hand like the ones just
mentioned. But students can also learn the process
of innovation, risk taking, and rule breaking from
models taken from a far broader spectrum, and long
before they are sent out into the world.
We should give them the opportunity to learn the path
of creativity taken by artists, musicians, dancers,
photographers, and architects. Art and artists, by
their very definition, breach barriers, define new
perspectives, and advance the frontiers of their field.
Impressionism, cubism, free verse poetry, jazz and
rock music - every field of artistic endeavor can
teach us something about unique perspective, creative
envisioning, and risk taking.
And to understand and imagine the nature of the "future,"
we also need to study the past. History offers us
a window on the consistency of human nature over centuries,
a description of social change, examples of mistakes
and miscalculations that altered the course of events.
Lastly, it tells us how the environment or culture
of a time or place can make it ripe for dramatic changes.
Scanning the world today for "hot spots" of innovation,
we come up with several areas including the U.S.,
Finland, Sweden, Canada, and Israel. According to
the Economist, the two leading centers for innovative
activity in the world appear, at first, to be an unlikely
match. They are California and Israel. At closer look,
however, these two places share some interesting similarities.
For example, the practice of networking has been raised
to a high art in both places. They both rely on a
significant immigrant population and have competitive,
almost aggressive, business practices. In each, there's
a great respect for learning and for risk taking.
These conditions and qualities seem to create the
environment or culture for innovation. The West Coast
of the U.S. and the Middle East are two very fertile
territories for innovation that we should observe
It turns out that governments can help too. They can
develop policies that create fertile environments
and encourage positive behaviors. Policies should
not be designed to control the process of getting
to the goal but rather to allow the process to work
at its best, to create the best atmosphere for progress
The federal government, and I might add the National
Science Foundation in particular, has developed a
strong record in promoting partnerships -- making
marriages among some unlikely partners - to move us
toward our science and technology objectives for the
Partnerships are yet another aspect of integration.
They introduce a different dimension to the process
of promoting science, engineering, and technology
because they bring to the table participants with
different expertise and resources, and a diversity
The federal government has provided strong leadership
here. For much more than a decade, we have been advocating
public-private partnerships in federal research and
development. In the beginning we merely exchanged
favorable rhetoric about the importance of partnerships.
Slowly we took steps to form genuine working arrangements.
Further down the path, we began to see results.
Reality suggests that the mix of partners will skew,
in a positive way, the perspective and objective of
the research and stabilize the important dísruption
of disparate ideas. A partnership with government
and industry will move differently than a partnership
of government and a university. When you include all
three you have different purposes and outcomes. Our
greatest strength may be in the very diversity of
combinations and partners.
We should always view these combinations as creative
arrangements. They are not formulas to be
automatically replicated but rather new patterns to
be ingeniously enhanced each time we create the next
combination. Arrangements as diverse as the Partnership
for a New Generation of Vehicles, with the big three
automakers, and the very diverse set of Engineering
Research Centers attest to this.
It is useful to remind ourselves that the context and
environment in which we have to operate will always
change and so will the competition. Part of building
a continuum of success in science, engineering, technology,
and in entrepreneurship is retaining the ability to
"see" and act upon a changing context.
Twenty years ago, the global economy was far less "global."
Our own domestic economy had a very different mix
of industries, and our workforce was far less service-oriented
than it is today. In addition, in every era, new enabling
technologies quickly influence our methods of commerce,
of manufacturing, of service, and even the very social
order of our society.
History gives us many examples of this influence --
the steam engine, electricity, and air transportation.
Today's composite of digital, electronic, and optical
technologies is reframing society as concept-driven
We can already calculate the impact. The Economist
probably said it better than I could. They recently
wrote, "America gets more than half its economic growth
from industries that barely existed a decade ago -
such is the power of innovation, especially in the
information and biotechnology industries."
There have been few that envisioned what the Economist
article revealed about the significance of information
systems and the revolution being created by the biotechnology
The astute "readers of the context" and accurate "predictors
of the future" for the last several decades have proven
to us that envisioning is a worthwhile endeavor.
I began these remarks with trajectories, inflections,
and innovation. This short journey that we have taken
along all three paths brings us to a conclusion that
speaks to connections, integration, interrelationships,
and overlapping consequences. There is something quite
beautiful in that intricacy, like a mathematical equation
or a poem that leads us to its central place without
ever naming the place.
There is also great challenge here for the nation and
the world in the next few decades. As we contemplate
those challenges for our science, engineering and
technology, we must understand that supremacy in research
and education, in innovation, and in competitive entrepreneurship
is an enduring quest, an on-going process.
There is no peak that we can reach that will assure
continuing success. It is not a matter of sticking
to the task for the long haul. It is the "haul."
We will always need to keep improving the process with
fresh ideas and a fundamental commitment. We will
need to break the right rules and take the right risks.
It will be demanding, exciting, and a bit precarious,
as the unknown always is.
It seems to me that a great university can be a wonderful
mentor to a whole generation of innovators in all
fields, not just science, engineering, and technology.
In the spirit of that potential and that opportunity,
I can think of no finer institution to lead the way.
It is an honor to call the University of Pennsylvania