Global Competitiveness Report 2010

Reports and opinions analyzing U.S. R&D spending, education, the business climate and other factors suggest the U.S. is slipping in its role as a leader in innovation.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. imagines itself as the world's leader in innovation, and with good reason. American tech dominates many world markets.

Theme that's been picked up

It is a theme that's been picked up by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in physics. Both have warned recently that the nation is facing a "Sputnik moment," with a shrinking share of the world's innovation export market.

This view as well arises as the U.S. continues to lead the world in new tech directions, just as cloud computing. U.S. tech firms are building highly energy efficient data centers at shopping mall-sized scale to serve global clients.

Innovation center

Even India's rise as a innovation center would not be possible without the U.S. India's big offshore companies continue to earn more than 50% of their revenue from North America. If it wasn't for Apple , China wouldn't be manufacturing iPhones and iPads .

The impact of U.S. technology continues to be enormous and surprising, creating such technologies as social networking. Facebook and Twitter proved to be important tools in reshaping the Middle East.

The World Economic Forum

So what's up with the World Economic Forum, which this week ranked Sweden as the number one country in its annual Global Information Research Report? Did the report's authors mistake Ikea for IBM?

The report maintains that "there is no area on the globe that has an inherent advantage" in the digital economy. The rankings are based on those countries it believes are making the best use of new technologies and high-speed networks, during it measures PCs per population, mobile devices with data access, political environment, in short on.

It would not be difficult to poke a stick at the World Economic Forum's tech rankings. Nevertheless there's a growing body of evidence that says the U.S. is in decline or in danger of it. These reports and cogent opinions analyze R&D spending, education, the business climate and many other things, and they are increasingly influencing the debate in Washington.

3. The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and U.S. Technology and Competitiveness . This report by the Information Innovation & Research Foundation found that of the 40 countries that were compared to the U.S, all of them made faster progress toward a knowledge-based economy than the U.S. The report ranked China first.

Quite serious problem

"It is a quite serious problem," said Robert Atkinson, of the ITIF, in an interview, "because if we can't compete on the research side and the innovation side anymore at the time what do we have left?"

6. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2010-11 examines what it calls the "12 pillars of competitiveness" among nations. The report lowers the U.S. ranking by two places, to fourth, with the U.S. trailing behind Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore. China moved up two notches, to 27 from 29. The U.S. nevertheless has a commanding lead nevertheless the forum's sees "escalating weakness" in the U.S. economy, namely from its fiscal deficits.

Bonus read: Lawmakers in Washington nearly shut down the government recently over a series of contentious budget riders that had nothing to do with innovation. Nevertheless to learn what Congress did to the less visible issues in such areas as science, innovation and innovation funding, at that time keep an eye on the work on the Computer Research Association's policy blog , written by Peter Harsha.