This week’s guest Dr. Thomas Buckholtz makes an early appearance this week on Lisacast, Saturday at 2 pm PST live 
.
Date: Saturday, June 2rd, 2007
Time: 2:00 – 2:30 am PST
Dial-in #: +1 (646) 478-4956
Download the show after it airs.
Q. From Jan Sandred via Twitter during the show:
“Jan Sandred how important is governance vs “the market” to create growth?”
A. From Lisa at Lisacast:
“Thanks for the question, Jan. This is a very interesting question, in particular, because of its origin. Jan Sandred is from Sweden. He was a panelist at the Innovation Journalism Conference last week at Stanford University. He and I spoke about the differences in our cultures from a business standpoint. In Sweden, the government holds a more commonly present position in the funding and growth of a business. But deeper I think is the fact that in the Swedish culture, descisions are made by consensus, whereas in America we all seem to lead, whether or not anyone follows. There are benefits to both of course. While the American aggressive, independent nature may yield quick successes, it will produce at least as many failures, and sometimes because without the support of the business ecosystem, investors, employees and partners, etc. it cannot grow. In a recent post I wrote called The Return of Reliance, I touched on the fact that that we seem to be refamiliarizing ourselves in this country (me specifically even) with the idea of relying on our networks, other members of our society, and other supporters for back up. I guess this is not as much a matter of ‘governance’ or policy or regulation as it is consensus support. The idea posed, of governence as a supporting force for growth rather than market demand, well let’s look at that for a moment as it relates to new media. All kinds of policy issues are popping up each day on net neutrality, bloggers as press, information availability, government access, military blogging/videoblogging — the point I’m making is that it’s a moving target because we don’t all agree as much as group about what’s what. That’s part of the nature of the United States. That’s why we came here in the first place. To be able to express our differences. And as more information is available and tools the same to produce and distribute it, it’s meant only to get more complicated. And as it does, society will shift to accomodate. To me, there are a couple of issues. One, are racing to the market and growing fast good things? Some businesses grow too fast without becoming sophisticated enough to manage their own growth and crumble. Slow is not always bad. The second issue is how will governance change. Watch the US campaigns for the 2008 presidency. Watch the effect of user generated media, grassroot campaigns and voting system reformation. I think we’re going to see governence change and as a result, market entry and organization growth with it.”
Jan Sandred
June 6, 2007
In general I think there is a resistance to “governance” in the US (and especially CA), despite government introduced initiatives/incentives like Arpanet, NASA, and SBIR to create growth and innovations. In the U.S. I often face the term “innovation network” or “ecosystem” – the market should take care if it. While we in Sweden use the term “innovation systems” or “cluster”, which implicate the active role of government.
Our findings at VINNOVA show that “the market” is imperfect. The distance between the concept and a company is long and winding. From a policy perspective VINNOVA’s concern is that there is a widening and deepening gap between federally/state funded long-range basic research and industry financed product development. We believe that good policy and programs can help bridge the market failures. For example the lack of early-stage financing, no matter how promising the new firms are. Or to get the firms out on the IPO market when the current financial markets only present sobering valuations and a growing illiquidity.
The government has a role to fix the market gaps, and to take measures.