How Do You Ignite Innovation?
The superb New York Times columnist David Brooks has a piece in today’s newspaper that is well worth reading. He raises one of the most important, and yet overlooked, questions in the ongoing health reform debate – what role should government play in the future of medical innovation? Brooks writes:
“This country is about to have a big debate on the role of government. The polarizers on cable TV think it’s going to be a debate between socialism and free-market purism. But it’s really going to be a debate about how to promote innovation.”
Brooks explains that the debate is between who believe that “government can get actively involved in organizing innovation” and those who believe “government should actively tilt the playing field to promote social goods and set off decentralized networks of reform, but they don’t believe government knows enough to intimately organize dynamic innovation.”
The Brooks column reminds me of something the former CEO of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Bob Waller, was fond of saying, that government trying to get its arms around the scope and pace of innovation was like a dog trying to drink every drop of water out of a firehose. It just can’t be done very well.
