A Strategy for American Innovation: Securing Our Economic Growth and Prosperity

Home | Executive Summary | Introduction | Invest in Building Blocks | Market-Based Innovation | Catalyze Breakthroughs | Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C

America’s future economic growth and international competitiveness depend on our capacity to innovate.  We can create the jobs and industries of the future by doing what America does best – investing in the creativity and imagination of our people.  To win the future, we must out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We also must take responsibility for our deficit, by investing in what makes America stronger, cutting what doesn’t, and reforming how our government operates so it focuses on promoting our economic growth and preparing for the challenges of a new century.

President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation seeks to harness the inherent ingenuity of the American people to ensure that our economic growth is rapid, broad-based, and sustained.  Innovation-based economic growth will bring greater income, higher quality jobs, and improved health and quality of life to all U.S. citizens.  The Strategy for American Innovation provides a multifaceted, commonsense, and sustained approach to ensuring America’s future prosperity. 

This document updates the Innovation Strategy issued in September 2009, detailing how the Administration, the American people, and American businesses can work together to strengthen our long-run economic growth.  It begins by explaining the essential role of innovation in our past and future prosperity, the central importance of the private sector as the engine of innovation, and the role of government in supporting our innovation system.  Building from this framework and the initiatives set forth in the first innovation strategy document, it charts the progress of our initial efforts, discusses additional steps implemented in the past year, and introduces important new initiatives, all captured by the pyramid below.