Chapter Summary: The Use Of Brainpower In America

The book is a call, by the authors, to America about what the nation can achieve if we work together. It portrays America to be on a slow decline both economically and politically based on a fall in high-tech advancements, its difficulty in adapting to globalization, adjusting to the informal technology revolution, coping with large and soaring budget deficits because of the increasing burdens on the government, and managing the increasing energy consumption/rising climate threats. The authors gave some hope that the country can regain lost grounds and prosper again by applying brainpower which can be through providing public education for more Americans, continuous building of infrastructure (roads, bridges, ports, airports, bandwidth, fiber-optic lines, and wireless networks) so that American workers and firms can communicate and collaborate effectively, and goods and services can then be transported quickly and at a low cost. They also suggested that entry into America by immigrants should not be difficult so that different types of skills can be added to its workforce to enrich the economy. In addition, there is the need for government to support Research and Development (R&D) which will increase human knowledge and then in turn …show more content…
They suggested that in collaborating, there should both be top-down and bottom-up input which will lead to innovation that stems from seeing the problem and working with the materials. Additionally, it is important to retain as much manufacturing in the United States as possible so that American workers can take part in the innovation process. This point is vital because the experience of working directly with a product (instead of having majority of production come from China) and figuring how to develop it or upgrade it to a better product is critical in retaining a world-leader