White House awaits huge innovation report

Abstract

The big federal study on innovation is about over. Two weeks of public sessions have just been finished and now the staff of Jordan M. Baruch, assistant Commerce Secretary for science and technology, is boiling down the 150 recommendations and assorted critiques. Baruch will deliver a slim final report to White House domestic policy chief Stuart Eizenstat around the end of March. Hope is that President Carter, who ordered the study to find out what supposedly is holding back innovation, will have a list of actions that will be politically exploitable, Congressionally salable, sufficiently novel, and reflecting the real world. Pre-Baruch pretenders to the technology throne have gone to bat before in quest of establishing policy dominion. They all took swings, managed a couple of base hits, hit mostly foul balls, and really changed no basic rules of the game. Tax codes affecting research and development were altered here and there, antitrust policies remained unchanged, ...