Well, I’ve just been looking through questions on linkedin and I saw that there was an interesting one there which had been answered by a couple of my network contacts - “What ideas do you have to keep America competitive is the years ahead?”. I went to the Q&A section and saw that the question already had 2561 answers, which is rather more than my questions get on Linkedin (by a factor of 200!). Turns out Barack Obama is asking.  Here is a selection of suggestions:

Sort out 1. Education (somehow), 2. Industrial Strategy, where there seems to be a familiar (from a UK viewpoint) disconnect between R&D and manufacturing in the US and 3. Infrastructure, which seems to be in a poor state.

Not being dependent on other countries resources (!)

Low taxes, minimal government

Invest in renewable energy

Invest in new technology and bring in talent

Empower individuals and businesses to be innovative and to be willing to take risks by implementing new ideas, without oveercontrolling them

Encourage innovation, keep jobs in the US, encourage an even playing field and keep the money made in US banks.

Use the military to keep drugs out of the US and invade countries which produce them. raise tax on fuel and teach Spanish as well as English (!!!)

I lost interest a bit here to be honest. Suffice to say there is a lot more stuff to read on the Linkedin Q&A. I reckon it is a good thing that Obama is asking questions on linkedin, although the test will be how well he responds I guess. Also good, from the POV of this blog that there seems to be a major theme around innovation in various guises. In fact, innovation must be at the core of any transformation in the US or anywhere else for that matter.