In this webmemo ITIF senior analyst Daniel Castro and research analyst Scott Andes discuss Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post-American World and dispute his conclusions that the United States has little to worry about in terms of international competition and innovation.

ITIF Senior Analyst Stephen Ezell’s article, "America and the World: We’re Number 40!", in September’s Democracy Journal examines how the United States has lost its lead in developing innovation policies (and thus risks losing leadership in high-technology innovation), what other countries have done to capture this lead from the United States, and how we can get it back.

Duke Law School professors Stuart Benjamin and Arti Rai propose that the Obama administration (or Congress, if Congress is willing) create an Office of Innovation Policy that would draw upon, and feed into, existing regulatory review processes but would have the specific mission of being the “innovation champion” within these processes.

Innovation is central to economic growth and to solving a host of pressing societal challenges. It is therefore critical to ensure that the federal agencies’ actions promote innovation, or at least pursue other social objectives in a manner that is least damaging to innovation. There is no formal process within the executive branch to ensure that this happens, however. In particular, the centralized cost-benefit review performed by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs generally ignores the impact of agency actions on innovation. A new Offi