Susan Hockfield of MIT
I’ve heard some rather direct and harsh criticism of President Obama’s recent comment about the USA being a “bit lazy” the last few decades.
I’ll agree his comment is a bit unfair from one perspective: The USA has had nearly non-stop increases in productivity, and this for many years. Americans are working harder and doing more with less people, that’s true. And most workers are also doing it for less money. This squeeze is creating a tension that runs parallel to, and resonates with, the Occupy movement — but that’s another discussion.
The fair part of Obama’s remark is that in the last 30 years the USA has watched it’s manufacturing base, and many of its competitive advantages, such as the deep science behind materials research, shrink. I won’t talk about infrastructure here, another fair critique of USA “laziness.” Obama’s remarks were actually specific to the USA attracting new businesses to come into America, and not a commentary on the productivity of American workers. Of course, those who fault Obama for apologizing for America find it easy to ignore the context. I’m reminded of what President Truman once said about his moniker “give em hell Harry” — he said, “I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s Hell.”
It’s a tough pill to swallow the idea the USA is lazy — in any way.
Innovation is alive and well in the USA, but with a caveat. Good ideas thought of in the USA, those new widgets (or iPad’s) are now usually made offshore. The late, great, Steve Jobs complained to Obama that Apple would need 30,000 factory engineers in order to build a plant in the USA — and those trained engineers simply did not exist.
I think it’s lazy not to have those 30,000 engineers in the USA. This is something that could be addressed in fairly short order, but it’s simply not being tackled. This is a bi-partisan issue is it not? It’s frustrating to watch the lack of action. I could extend these comments to the UK as well — if you want manufacturing you need to have trained people who can make things.
Example of the mindset: I was in a discussion recently about creating a fairly small number of printed manuals. I observed that the mostly American team did not even consider printing in country — the default was China or Korea — for printing! I realize that in the years since I ordered a lot of printing the whole game has changed; expertise and capacity once taken for granted, no longer exist.
MIT President Susan Hockfield recently sounded off on the subject of investment in innovation and warned that cutting federal funds to education, research and manufacturing will stifle growth and job creation. She said “The big question is: Where will our much needed jobs come from? Will we let other nations lead or will we seize the lead.” Well said Ms. Hockfield.
So, while I take the point about nearly continuous productivity gains, there is more than one way to measure a countries efforts to stay competitive. It has to include an investment in people, science, materials — innovation. Not making that investment is — Lazy (I would add stupid). We (the USA) need to be a country not just of hard workers, but educated workers, who make things. I don’t blame the American worker, I blame the American government’s lack of action in the last 30 years.
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4 responses to “Innovation Requires You Make Things; Obama's "Lazy" Comment — Mostly True”
Hey Susan,
I am a college professor/ corporate trainer I am interested in the book and training programs on innovation.
IMHO, I see fewer students or people creating. Most want to be told what to think and answer. We were once a country of dreamers that figured out how to get things done a different way because what was offered was not good enough. Many in our country are consumed with being spectators first and settling for whatever is given to them rather than creating better for themselves and others.
Regards
A-
Hi Alan,
I appreciate your comment. I think there are still a lot of self reliant-dreaming-creating Americans out there, but it’s a culture we’ve suppressed not encouraged. Shop class is gone, why? Anyway, I’m the author of the piece and only cited Susan of MIT because of her pithy comments. What do you teach?
Gregg Fraley
Great article Greg. There is little doubt that Americans work their rears off. Many European workers get 2 months of vacation time for God’s sake and if I remember correctly we in the US don’t even use a lot of our measly 7-8 days a year on average. The data is similar to that. And the recent Republican criticism of Obama on that front is ridiculous. He was saying we can do better in terms of bringing jobs to America. What is wrong with that? He’s trying to bring jobs to America, and Republicans even criticize that.
MIT gets beaucoup research funding now and of course they are going to keep encouraging it. Top universities like MIT make so much money in research that the students basically are often given a free ride for college rather than forced to take on debt. Harvard, Princeton and to a large degree MIT. It’s a very profitable business. There is plenty of money to spread around. Overall, that is a good thing. Our colleges are bringing good jobs to America!
And yet those same colleges are altruistic enough to also post most of their classes online and give them away for free. Another policy I agree with but the world manages their value a lot more assiduously.
Obama’s recent Asia trip will be studied closely by historians. He has been much more aggressive with China regarding the yuan and on issues in the south china sea. He is advocating a form of free Asia trading zone similar to the Eurozone, with the US as a major part of that. He is positioning the US as a preferred trading partner in the region. US oil companies will want to have a role in exploiting the regions drilling opportunities and he is also currying favor with many regional nations not named China with that policy. Now he is even positioning troops in Darwin, Australia to support the region. That show of force and commitment will encourage more trade with countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, which is what we should have been doing for years rather than dump all our investment in China.
We should be surrounding and containing China with strong democracies more capable of defending themselves and we need to get serious about pushing China to raise the value of it’s currency to realistic levels. Obama will go down in history as an effective “export” president, doing much to sell American goods to the world. A lot of those exports will be military goods as regional tensions are rising especially in Asia. Area countries know that they are vulnerable and they are responding by taking on more of their own defense needs. Another very important strategic development in Obama’s management of US world affairs. We should not be the world’s policeman. We need help.
I’m not Obama’s PR manager but when we drill down to the details the guy has been outstanding in so many ways internationally.
It’s the details a lot of people are missing with Obama, thanks for providing some.