John Kao Q&A: How the U.S. Can Reclaim its Innovation Edge (and why Rhode Island may hold the key!)

Today’s conversation on innovation typically focuses on individual companies or market sectors, but with his new book, Innovation Nation, Business Innovation Factory Research Advisor John Kao takes the talk to a whole new level: how can you innovate a country?

Kao may just have the most interesting–and diverse–resume of anyone I’ve come across. A celebrated jazz pianist, he’s toured with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention band, produced several movies including sex, lies & videotape, taught at Harvard Business School for 14 years, wrote a best-selling book called Jamming, founded a few firms and consulted to big companies, small start-ups and government agencies around the world. Along the way, he also trained in philosophy with a B.A from Yale, psychiatry with a M.D. from Yale Medical and also business with a M.B.A from Harvard Business.

His book is fascinating. When you deal with populations instead of employees and governments instead of competitors, something as simple as a “common agenda” becomes difficult to achieve. It’s clear that Kao is an innovation enlightener fervently bent on helping U.S. leaders move from just “getting” the importance of innovation to “getting innovation done.”

He writes that the U.S. is in the midst of a “silent Sputnik” moment. Since we don’t have an obvious inciting incident such as the Soviet’s putting up a satellite in space before us in 1957, we need a leader who can galvanize and incentivize smart people to tackle interesting and purposeful problems.

I spent some time on the phone recently with John. We talked about why the U.S. is desperately in need of an innovation strategy and how organizations like the Business Innovation Factory, which address the systemic nature of problems, could help the U.S. regain its competitive edge.

Download the interview