Manufacturing: The Key to American Innovation
What’s the Latest Development?
A recently-released long-term study conducted by MIT researchers explains in detail how retaining America’s manufacturing base will prove essential to maintaining the country’s signature economic advantage: innovation. “While there are a variety of reasons why the nation should seek to retain its own manufacturing base, from defense capacities to job creation, the report [called Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE)] aims to highlight the larger potential that manufacturing holds for innovation-based economic growth in the United States.”
What’s the Big Idea?
Besides providing for national defense and a source of good-paying jobs, manufacturing works to create a network of producers who can take advantage of what other producers in the same geographical area have to offer. “The report emphasizes that manufacturing should not be regarded as a small group of traditional, shrinking industries. Instead, manufacturing is a diverse, evolving group of industries in which new products and knowledge frequently emerge from firms of all sizes throughout the country.” The report also recommends that public and private institutions collaborate to spread the risk of new ventures.
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