This week, ITI, will unveil the latest iteration of its STEM book, Moving Education Forward:  Strengthening STEM in Today’s Classrooms, spotlighting many of our member companies that are making serious investments to help build the skills America’s students and workers need to succeed in the 21st century workplace. The ITI publication promises to be an excellent resource detailing the high-tech industry’s [...]

Grey skies and rainy weather could not dampen the spirit of excitement and opportunity as the National Academy of Sciences today marked its 150th anniversary.  President Obama was on hand, and offered a look not just at the legacy of America’s researchers, but also at the enormous opportunity that this generation and the coming generations of scientists will unlock.  It’s not a speech that is likely [...]

There is one word that shows up consistently in President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget:  innovation.  We see it in the descriptions of almost every federal agency’s spending blueprint.  (In fact, the word “innovation” shows up 107 times in the 244-page budget.) The investments that the president proposes in research and development (R&D), in scientific exploration, in cutting-edge education initiatives, [...]

Back in 1990, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) embarked on an ambitious plan to map the human genome (HGP).  The project had a number of technical questions it hoped to solve, but the basic premise was to glean greater insight into human DNA.  While the federal government was the key driver in the project, it was very much a public-private partnership in that [...]

The American story is littered with tales of displaced workers.  These workers, often through no fault of their own, were left by the wayside as the economy’s defining characteristics evolved.  An innovation-driven, dynamic economy could change a worker’s skillset from incomparable to incompatible overnight.  That is the harsh lesson of our history as the country moved from an agrarian to an industrialized [...]

We’re two days from the deadline that Congress and the President set for themselves to find a solution to dodge the indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts to federally funded programs, otherwise known as sequestration.  Sequestration, if you remember, was the mechanism approved by Congress and the President in 2011 to spur greater focus by both to take steps address the nation’s deficits.  It was believed, [...]

“My fellow Americans, the skills mismatch in our country is large, and it continues to grow.  Countries that invest in their children -- countries like India and China -- are innovating and growing.  Each day that we fail to adequately prepare our students to face tomorrow’s challenges is a wasted day.  We must shrink the skills gap.” That’s exactly how I would kickoff Tuesday’s State of the Union [...]

Later this morning, Texas Instruments Chairman, President, & CEO Richard Templeton will testify before a House committee on the critical importance of federal support for science and R&D, and how the U.S. stacks up against global competitors.  (The hearing starts at 9:30 a.m. ET, and you can watch it live here.)  Before the hearing, Mr. Templeton and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley [...]

Time and again, news reports remind us that the U.S. has lost its competitive edge and faces an uphill climb in the 21st century to regain and maintain its innovative leadership.  We're constantly told that America is a country that doesn’t produce anything anymore, is on the decline, or lacks ingenuity.  While these arguments make for convenient headlines, ITI member Microsoft did a lot to dispel [...]

When the much ballyhooed Super Committee failed to reach an agreement to address the national debt last year, committee members put in place an automatic spending cut mechanism so draconian and unpalatable it was thought that Congress was certain to act before it went into effect.  The mechanism, in short, slashes nearly all of the federal government’s annual discretionary budgets by 8.4 percent.  [...]