[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 145 (Tuesday, July 29, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 44064-44068]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-17761]
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OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL
Strategy for American Innovation
ACTION: Notice of Request for Information.
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SUMMARY: The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National
Economic Council request public comments to provide input into an
upcoming update of the Strategy for American Innovation, which helps to
guide the Administration's efforts to promote lasting economic growth
and competitiveness through policies that support transformative
American
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innovation in products, processes, and services and spur new
fundamental discoveries that in the long run lead to growing economic
prosperity and rising living standards. These efforts include policies
to promote critical components of the American innovation ecosystem,
including scientific research and development (R&D), technical
workforce, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, advanced
manufacturing, and others. The strategy also provides an important
framework to channel these Federal investments in innovation capacity
towards innovative activity for specific national priorities. The
public input provided through this notice will inform the deliberations
of the National Economic Council and the Office of Science and
Technology Policy, which are together responsible for publishing an
updated Strategy for American Innovation.
DATES: Responses must be received by September 23, 2014 to be
considered.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any of the following methods
(email is preferred):
Email: innovationstrategy@ostp.gov. Include [Strategy for
American Innovation] in the subject line of the message.
Fax: (202) 456-6040, Attn: Dan Correa.
Mail: Attn: Dan Correa, Office of Science and Technology
Policy, Eisenhower Executive Office Building, 1650 Pennsylvania Ave
NW., Washington, DC 20504. If submitting responses by mail, please
allow sufficient time for mail processing and screening.
Details: Response to this RFI is voluntary. Please do not include
in your comments information of a confidential nature, such as
sensitive personal information or proprietary information. Please be
aware that your comments may be posted online. Responses to this notice
are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Federal Government to form
a binding contract or issue a grant. Information obtained as a result
of this notice may be used by the Federal Government for program
planning on a non-attribution basis. The United States Government will
not pay for response preparation, or for the use of any information
contained in the response.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dan Correa, (202) 456-4444,
innovationstrategy@ostp.gov, OSTP.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This Request for Information (RFI) offers
interested individuals and organizations the opportunity to provide
input into the development of an updated Strategy for American
Innovation by identifying promising policy opportunities to promote
innovation and its economic benefits in the United States (U.S.). The
public input provided through this notice will inform the deliberations
of the National Economic Council and the Office of Science and
Technology Policy, which are together responsible for publishing an
updated Strategy for American Innovation.
Public input into the strategy update process is particularly
valuable given the document's critical role in guiding the development
of new policy initiatives that can help unleash the transformative
innovation that leads to long-term economic growth. For example, the
2009 Strategy for American Innovation first identified an opportunity
for Federal agencies to use incentive prizes to promote innovation,
which was an important step in the eventual inclusion of agency prize
authority in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010,
significantly increasing the Federal Government's ability to catalyze
innovation across a wide range of national priorities.
Background
President Obama released the Strategy for American Innovation in
September 2009 and updated it in February 2011 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovation/strategy).
The 2011 Strategy for American Innovation articulates the
importance of innovation as a driver of U.S. economic growth and
prosperity, the central importance of the private sector as the engine
of innovation, and the critical role of government in supporting our
innovation system.
It organizes the Administration's policy initiatives into three
parts:
(1) Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation
Spurring the innovations that will drive America's future economic
growth and competitiveness requires critical investments in the basic
foundations of the innovation process, including education, fundamental
research, and both the digital and physical infrastructure on which our
dynamic economy relies.
(2) Promote Market-Based Innovation
American businesses are the engine of innovation, and the
Administration seeks to promote an environment that allows U.S.
companies to drive future economic growth and continue to lead on the
global stage. This requires that government establish and maintain the
right framework conditions to support market-based innovation through
the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit, effective intellectual
property policy, and policies to promote innovation-based
entrepreneurship as well as innovative, open, and competitive markets.
(3) Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities
The 2011 strategy identifies several areas of national importance
where public investments can catalyze advances, bring about key
breakthroughs, and establish U.S. leadership faster than might be
possible otherwise. The portfolio of national priority areas outlined
in the 2011 strategy includes clean energy, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, educational and health
information technologies, and space technologies.
Questions
To gather valuable insight into promising opportunities to boost
our innovation capacity in order to drive economic growth and
competitiveness, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and
the National Economic Council (NEC) seek public comment on a wide range
of innovation policy topics.
Instructions. In formulating responses to any of the below
questions, respondents should consider the following:
The questions below are grouped into the following categories:
[cir] Overarching Questions
[cir] Innovation Trends
[cir] Science, Technology, and R&D Priorities
[cir] Skilled Workforce Development
[cir] Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship
[cir] Regional Innovation Ecosystems
[cir] Intellectual Property/Antitrust
[cir] Novel Government Tools for Promoting Innovation
[cir] National Priorities
Respondents are free to address any or all of the following
questions, as well as provide additional relevant information not in
response to any specific question. Please note the number corresponding
to the question(s) addressed in the response.
Specific, actionable proposals for policy mechanisms, models,
or initiatives are more useful than general observations and
recommendations. For example, a response that describes the importance
of increasing technology transfer activities is helpful but not as
useful as one that
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identifies specific model(s) to accomplish this goal and offers
accompanying details (e.g., the specific problem it addresses and how
it does so, the parties who would be responsible for administering the
model, actions the Administration might take, the likely benefits and
costs, the rationale and evidence to support the proposal, etc.).
There is a 5,000 word limit for responses. Accordingly,
responses longer than 5,000 words will not be considered. There is no
minimum length requirement, and a 500 word response can be as valuable
as a 5,000 word response if it contains detailed and well-founded
information.
OSTP and NEC seek public comment on the following:
Overarching Questions
(1) What specific policies or initiatives should the Administration
consider prioritizing in the next version of the Strategy for American
Innovation?
For any proposal, respondents may wish to consider describing
specific goals, the actions the Administration might take to achieve
those goals, the benefits and costs associated with the proposal,
whether the proposal is cross-government, inter-agency, or agency-
specific, the rationale and evidence to support it, and the roles of
other stakeholders, such as companies, universities, non-profits,
philanthropists, state and local governments, professional societies,
etc.
(2) What are the biggest challenges to, and opportunities for,
innovation in the United States that will generate long-term economic
growth, increased productivity, sustained leadership in knowledge-
intensive sectors, job creation, entrepreneurship, and rising standards
of living for more Americans?
(3) What specific actions can the Federal Government take to build
and sustain U.S. strengths including its entrepreneurial culture,
flexible labor markets, world-class research universities, strong
regional innovation ecosystems, and large share of global venture
capital investment?
(4) How can the Federal Government augment its overall capacity for
analysis of both the forces that determine the competitiveness of
specific sectors and the impact of Federal policies--including, but not
limited to, science, technology, and innovation policies--on sector-
specific productivity and competitiveness? What are the most important
outstanding questions about innovation policy and process and how might
government promote systematic research and program evaluation in those
areas?
Many policies can affect the ability of research-intensive
companies to innovate and compete in the marketplace, but the impact of
future policy choices on innovation is often not well understood in
advance. For example, telecommunications spectrum policies that
facilitate innovative business models may enable significant
productivity growth in the mobile communications sector. Improved
Federal capacity for analysis of such impacts would help inform policy
development to support innovation.
(5) What innovation practices and policies have other countries
adopted that deserve further consideration in the United States? What
innovation practices and policies have been adopted at the state or
local level that should be piloted by the Federal Government?
Innovation Trends
(6) How has the nature of the innovation process itself changed in
recent years and what new models for science and technology investment
and innovation policy, if any, do these changes require?
For example, many cite the growing importance of open innovation,
combinatorial innovation, and user innovation; the convergence of
biology, the physical sciences, and engineering; and the emergence of
human-centered design.
(7) What emerging areas of scientific and technological innovation
merit greater Federal investment, and how can that investment be
structured for maximum impact?
(8) What are important needs or opportunities for institutional
innovation and what steps can the Federal Government take to support
these innovations?
Economists have identified institutional innovation as critical to
long-term economic growth. Examples of particularly important
institutional innovations include the British invention of patents and
copyrights in the 17th century, the work of the agricultural extension
service in the U.S. in the 19th century, and the development of the
peer review system for supporting basic research in the 20th century.
Science, Technology, and R&D Priorities
(9) What additional opportunities exist to develop high-impact
platform technologies that reduce the time and cost associated with the
``design, build, test'' cycle for important classes of materials,
products, and systems?
A number of the Administration's current research initiatives are
aimed at developing platform technologies for this purpose, such as:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/National
Institute of Health NIH)/Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ``tissue
chip'' project to transform the way researchers evaluate the safety and
efficacy of drug candidates;
The Materials Genome Initiative, which is investing in a
``materials innovation infrastructure'' to reduce the time and cost
required to discover and make advanced materials by at least 50
percent;
Federal investments in new tools to reduce the time and cost
needed to engineer biological systems;
The DARPA ``Adaptive Vehicle Make'' program, which supported
the development of technologies such as model-based design to shorten
development timelines for defense systems by a factor of five or more.
(10) Where are there gaps in the Federal Government's science,
technology, and innovation portfolios with respect to important
national challenges, and what are the appropriate investment and R&D
models through which these gaps might be addressed?
Agencies lacking a traditional focus on research and development
nonetheless pursue critical missions that could benefit from
innovation. Given these agencies' more modest capacity to support
research and development and other avenues to innovation, there is
potentially underinvestment in science, technology and innovation to
address key national problems such as education, workforce development,
and poverty alleviation.
(11) Given recent evidence of the irreproducibility of a surprising
number of published scientific findings, how can the Federal Government
leverage its role as a significant funder of scientific research to
most effectively address the problem?
Skilled Workforce Development
(12) What novel mechanisms or models might facilitate matching
skilled STEM workers with employers and helping individuals identify
what additional skills they may need to transition successfully to new
roles?
In a dynamic economy, STEM workers seeking employment in a
different industry often find it difficult to identify employers with
matching needs. Likewise, employers devote
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significant resources to finding technically skilled individuals to
meet their needs, sometimes with little success, even though a large
pool of technically skilled workers may exist.
(13) What emerging areas of skills are needed in order to keep pace
with emerging innovations or technologies? What are successful models
for training workers with these skills to keep up with emerging
innovations?
For example, pharmaceutical researchers report that more workers
are needed with capabilities in gene sequencing and bioengineering to
keep pace with new innovations in bio-manufacturing. Similarly,
innovations in advanced materials from lightweight metals to advanced
composites have spurred a need for welders with the ability to create
high-precision welds on complex materials.
(14) What mechanisms or programs can effectively increase the
supply of workers with technical training, from industry-recognized
credentials and postsecondary certificates to two- and four-year
degrees?
Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship
(15) What new or existing investment models should be explored to
support entrepreneurship in new geographies, as well as in technologies
and sectors that are capital-intensive, relatively high-risk, and
require sustained investment over long periods of time?
Angel and venture investment has tended to concentrate in a few
regions and sectors, particularly sectors that are capital efficient
and can provide ``exits'' for investors within 5-7 years. As a result,
innovative technologies that do not meet these criteria may be better
suited to different investment models.
(16) For new technologies and products, how might ``proof of
manufacturability'' be gauged sooner, and what entities would most
appropriately provide the necessary resources and facilities? What
sectors represent the most promising opportunities for the application
of such models?
Assessing the feasibility of producing at scale remains a critical
hurdle for manufacturing startups attempting to commercialize new or
unproven technologies, but it is a challenge that firms do not face
until relatively late in their evolution, after a great deal of early
investment has already been committed. More effectively addressing this
challenge at an early stage could yield more efficient allocation of
investment capital, and greater commercialization of important
innovative technologies and products.
(17) What tools, business model innovations, financial innovations,
or other developments hold promise for reducing the cost of starting
and scaling a business in capital intensive sectors like the life
sciences, advanced materials, and clean energy? What can the Federal
Government do to accelerate these trends?
Over the past two decades, the cost of starting and scaling an IT-
based company has plummeted due to a combination of cheap, scalable
cloud computing, open source software, and other similar trends.
Extending these or similar developments to more capital intensive
sectors, where costs remain a significant barrier, would yield
significant benefits.
(18) What investments, strategies, or technological advancements,
across both the public and private sectors, are needed to rebuild the
U.S. ``industrial commons'' and ensure the latest technologies can be
produced here?
After a decade of significant offshoring, the United States has
lost important manufacturing capabilities and the connections between
manufacturers, know-how, national supply chains, educational
institutions, local workforce and financial institutions that provide
the foundation and resources for new technologies to be manufactured in
the U.S. As the manufacturing sector recovers and strengthens,
rebuilding these industrial commons will be important for capturing
domestically both the production of new technologies and next
generation manufacturing capabilities.
Regional Innovation Ecosystems
(19) What partnerships or novel models for collaboration between
the Federal Government and regions should the Administration consider
in order to promote innovation and the development of regional
innovation ecosystems?
(20) How should the Federal government promote the development of
metropolitan ``innovation districts,'' where large research
institutions, companies, start-ups, and business accelerators
congregate to facilitate the knowledge flows that sustain innovation?
Intellectual Property/Antitrust
(21) What new challenges and opportunities for intellectual
property and competition policy are posed by the increasing diversity
of models of innovation (including, e.g., through the growing use of
open innovation, combinatorial innovation, user innovation, internet-
enabled innovation, and big data-driven innovation)?
Novel Government Tools for Promoting Innovation
(22) What are specific areas where a greater capacity for
experimentation in law, policy, and regulation at the Federal level is
likely to have large benefits? Are there useful models of experimental
platforms in the public or private sectors that the Federal Government
can adopt? How might the Federal Government encourage state and local
experimentation?
New technologies and business models often evolve more rapidly than
law, policy, and regulation at the Federal, state and local level. One
approach to dealing with this challenge is to increase the capacity of
governments at all levels to support experimentation. For example, the
FCC recently reformed its experimental licensing rules to help
researchers and manufacturers bring new products to market more
rapidly. Analogous opportunities may exist in other areas.
(23) Beyond current Federal efforts to promote open data and open
application programming interfaces (APIs), what other opportunities
exist to open up access to Federal assets (such as data, tools,
equipment, facilities, and intellectual property from Federally-funded
research) in order to spark private sector innovation?
For example, the Internet economy has created new opportunities for
innovative business models relying on Federal data. Through open data
and open APIs, the Federal Government can invite competition among
firms to provide valuable services directly to end users by
incorporating these Federal assets. For example, a travel booking
provider might directly incorporate public campsite reservation
functionality into its Web site through open Federal APIs. Likewise, a
researcher looking to access billions of dollars of Federal testing
equipment can access equipment availability and usage information
through machine-readable data on Data.gov.
National Priorities
(24) Which new areas should be identified as ``national
priorities,'' either because they address important challenges
confronting U.S. security or living standards, or they present an
opportunity for public investments to catalyze advances, bring about
key breakthroughs and establish U.S. leadership faster than what might
be possible otherwise?
(25) What Federal policies or initiatives could unleash additional
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corporate and philanthropic investment for critical national
priorities, such as energy innovation?
In a number of areas, overall investment may be too low to sustain
our global leadership in innovation or to confront critical challenges
to our national wellbeing. For example, overall investment in clean
energy innovation remains significantly below the level that economists
and climate experts conclude are required to facilitate the transition
to a low-carbon economy. Other national priorities may suffer from
similar underinvestment, such as in learning technologies or in smart
infrastructure technologies. Responsible for the majority of U.S.
research and development (R&D) funding, private entities will be
essential to achieving the overall levels of investment required to
meet such challenges.
Respondents are also free to provide additional information they
think is relevant to the goal of promoting innovation in the United
States, and feedback on the framework and components of the 2011
Strategy for American Innovation.
Cristin A. Dorgelo,
Chief of Staff, Office of Science and Technology Policy.
John M. Galloway,
Chief of Staff, National Economic Council.
[FR Doc. 2014-17761 Filed 7-28-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3270-F4-P