Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?

WHEN James E. West was 8 years old, he propped himself on his bed’s brass footboard one afternoon and stretched to plug the cord of a radio he had repaired into a ceiling outlet. It was one of his first experiments. Mr. West’s hand sealed to the light socket as 120 volts of electricity shimmied through his body, freezing him in place until his brother knocked him from the footboard and onto the floor.

James E. West, an inventor with many patents, says Americans need to be more devoted to investing in innovation.

Like more storied inventors who preceded him, he was quickly hooked on the juice – even as he lay shivering from that first encounter. "I became fascinated by electricity after that, just completely fascinated," recalled Mr. West, now 74 and an award-winning research professor at Johns Hopkins University. "I needed to learn everything I could about it."

…

"The scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength," the National Academy of Sciences observed in a report released last month. "Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost – and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all."

By TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13invent.html