Role of Government in Innovation

These comments are in response to a thread at Linked In:

http://tinyurl.com/48jbqkg


You cannot force it, and respectfully I would submit that government efforts only stifle it. To avoid further politicization of this thread, I will limit my comments to two:

1) Approval through committees stifles innovation. The most bureaucratic committees are those formed by government. These must deliver politically desired / acceptable results, and are not disciplined by the market. Innovation not demanded / accepted by the market is useless to humanity.

2) Anecdotally, consider that the technology boom in California and elsewhere coincided with the significant reductions in aerospace and defense in the same geographic regions. Those laid-off engineers and scientists, now working outside of government dictated paths, delivered one of the greatest periods of innovation in the service of man known in recent history.

Leave it to individual human action, formed voluntarily in groups as they feel necessary, and innovation will flourish.