Killing Innovation
There is a serious problem when organizations get rich, they stop innovating. No technology company has been successfully able to transition from one era into the next and maintain dominance. They lose the passion and drive that enabled them to establish themselves in the first place. IBM -> Xerox -> Microsoft -> AOL -> Yahoo -> Google. Look at the stock prices over the life of these companies and you can see them taper off when companies stop bringing innovations to market.
A major component of this lack of transitional ability is the US Government. In 2008 just 65,000 of the best qualified individuals will be allowed to work in the US. The growth of Silicon Valley thrived on the ability to bring the best engineers in the world to work in one place. In 1999 the quota for H1B visas was double what it is today. This means brilliant people are coming to the US to be educated at our universities only to be deported when they receive their degree because they can not legally work in the county. Shouldn’t it be the other way around. Students dont contribute much, if anything to our economy. Companies should be enabled to hire the best person for the position regardless of national origin. Protectionism is only going to hurt companies in the long run.
Another major problem is the protection provided by US Patent & Trade office. Patents can be a very good thing when they enable companies and individuals to profit from their innovations. Contrarily, the situation in America is now hampering innovation. Currently a small number of companies account for a large percentage of the patents that are awarded. The aforementioned dinosaur companies spend billions of dollars on PHd’s and R+D plants to develop patentable technologies. Only a handful of these patents ever go into production however, so what you see is brilliant ideas being killed before they have a chance to get to market. These innovations would do more for society if they awarded to organizations who were going to bring them to market. Now that is a very subjective area but something needs to be done because every time I come up with an idea its already been patented by Microsoft or HP and its really pissing me off!
