Organized Innovation

An innovation gap has emerged as American universities have focused on basic research and industry has concentrated on incremental product development. This gap has widened in recent decades, and the country has failed to close the gap in large part because of three myths-that innovation is about lone geniuses, the free market, and serendipity. It is time to embrace a new solution. In Organized Innovation: How Universities Can Join Forces with Business and Government to Renew America's Prosperity, Currall, Frauenheim, Perry, and Hunter provide a framework for optimizing the way America creates, develops, and commercializes technology breakthroughs. A blueprint for leaders in universities, business, and government, Organized Innovation addresses the innovation gap before us, builds upon the collaborative, brokered way that innovation happens best, and explains how these new discoveries can be most effectively put into practice today to the benefit of both our country and the world. The Organized Innovation framework is grounded in the authors' nearly decade-long study of lessons from a little-known but highly successful federal research program. Over the past quarter-century, the Engineering Research Center program has returned to the U.S. economy 10 times the funding invested in it. Detailed cases from the ERCs are used to bring to life the elements of the Organized Innovation framework.