This important book delivers a critical wake-up call: a fierce global race for innovation advantage is under way, and while other nations are making support for technology and innovation a central tenet of their economic strategies and policies, America lacks a robust innovation policy. What does this portend? Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell, widely respected economic thinkers, report on profound new forces that are shaping the global economyforces that favor nations with innovation-based economies and innovation policies. Unless the United States enacts public policies to reflect this reality, Americans face the relatively lower standards of living associated with a noncompetitive national economy. The authors explore how a weak innovation economy not only contributed to the Great Recession but is delaying America's recovery from it and how innovation in the United States compares with that in other developed and developing nations. Atkinson and Ezell then lay out a detailed, pragmatic road map for America to regain its global innovation advantage by 2020, as well as maximize the global supply of innovation and promote sustainable globalization.

Robert D. Atkinson is founder and president, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Washington, DC. He frequently advises state, national, and international policy makers and was appointed by the Obama Administration to the National Innovation and Competitiveness Strategy Advisory Board. He lives in Chevy Chase, MD. Stephen J. Ezell is senior analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and leads ITIF’s work on trade, manufacturing, and measuring international innovation and information technology competitiveness. He lives in Washington, DC.