Intellectual Capital and Revitalizing Manufacturing

In December 2009, the White House released a paper outlining their manufacturing policy, A Framework for Revitalizing American Manufacturing. The Framework makes an excellent case that the federal government has a strong role to play in reinvigorating this important sector of the U.S. economy. It outlines the challenges facing manufacturing while describing the opportunities in new product areas. However, the ongoing transformation in manufacturing to a knowledge-intensive activity will require attention to all the inputs to the production process -- technology, worker skills, and organizational structures. The Framework recognizes that the nature of the economy has changed and implicitly accepts this basic premise. "Intellectual capital, such as patents from research and development as well as managerial know-how," the document states, "is a vital component in determining costs, growth rates and the creation of new industries." But while patents and managerial know-how are important components, a successful manufacturing framework must embrace the full range of intellectual capital and intangible assets. This Policy Brief makes a number of recommendations to directly incorporate intellectual capital into a manufacturing strategy and best position the United States for accelerated job, productivity, and economic growth in the coming year

US Economic Competitiveness At Risk: A Midwest Call to Action on Immigration Reform

For too long the Midwest has waited for Washington to produce meaningful reform of the nation's immigration laws. Bills have come and gone through the years, but often end in political gridlock. The Midwestern economy needs high-skilled, educated workers with long-term visas to create the companies and innovations that will power it in the future. Midwestern businesses need low-skilled immigrants with visas to sustain their industries. Midwestern schools insist that their students get the legal status that will lead to higher education and jobs. Midwestern farms seek a legal way to hire the seasonal help they need. Throughout the Midwest, cities and towns cope imaginatively with the social and economic challenges of immigration. Yet there is only so much the region can do until the federal government acts.That time has come. As economic recovery proceeds and political alignments shift, our region's leaders are thinking strategically about long-term economic competitiveness and the role played by immigrants at all levels. Midwest leaders want to ensure sustainable growth, jobs, population stability, and quality of life. Immigrants are an essential ingredient for this future. America's heartland can wait no longer.A diverse and bipartisan group of civic and business leaders, aware of the urgency of immigration reform and frustrated with delays, began convening in December 2011 to produce this report. Their priority was to state what the region needs from immigration reform to ensure its economic competitiveness. If 53 Republican and Democratic leaders -- drawn from companies, law enforcement, schools, hospitals, nonprofits, foundations, advocacy groups, and communities of faith -- from the 12-state Midwest can support these recommendations, then surely our representatives in Washington can act on them

Operations Management Curricula: Literature Review and Analysis

A review and analysis of studies on the interface between Operations Management (OM) academicians and industry practitioners indicate the existence of a persistent gap between what is being taught and what is relevant to practitioners in their daily jobs. The majority of practitioner studies have been directed at upper management levels, yet academia typically educates students for entry level or management trainee (undergraduate) and mid-management (MBA) positions. A recurring finding was that academicians prefer to teach quantitative techniques while practitioners favor qualitative concepts. The OM curricula literature shows some disagreements between academicians concerning subject matter, and a wide variety of teaching opinions. This paper provides an extensive analytical review of OM curricula literature along with their respective authors’ conclusions. From this analysis we suggest a customer-focused business plan to close the gap between industry and academia. This plan can be modified to account for faculty teaching and research interests, local industry requirements and institution specific factors such as class sizes and resources

Setting the Stage for Success: Developing an Orientation Program for Academic Library Faculty

A multi-faceted orientation program can provide a strong foundation for self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and retention of academic librarians. At many colleges and universities, academic librarians have faculty status. Becoming a member of a faculty involves an extensive process of socialization. This paper examines the literature of higher education and library science on the topic. It identifies the characteristics of effective orientation from that literature. Incorporating an organizational socialization model with the findings from both bodies of literature resulted in a flexible, multi-dimensional model for the orientation of academic library faculty. One university library is an example that can be readily adapted in any academic library

Networking for K-12 Education: The Federal Perspective

This article explains the need for quality educational technology in our schools, and notes the contributions of existing technology in improving education. It describes the potential that telecommunications network technology holds for revitalizing American education. It outlines the major federal programs that provide policy guidance and funding assistance for educational institutions to access and contribute to the evolving National Information Infrastructure (NII), and summarizes federal activities to date. In particular it describes the relevant experiences of the first year of the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) which is part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce. Contact information for all federal programs is provided as well

University press publishing consortium for Africa : lessons from academic libraries

This paper presents the results of a case study of the policies and practices of six African university presses. Based on the findings, it posits the formation of a consortium of African university presses. It borrows heavily from consortium formation in the library world

Paper Session I-D - Internet Science and TechnologyFair

Space science can strengthen American education and enhance scientific and technological literacy by engaging people\u27s imagination and strengthening their interest in science and exploration. The results of space science missions have literally revealed the universe through new eyes and opened up new worlds to explore and understand. The awe-inspiring missions, rich data bases, and creative talents of the space science community can have a powerful and positive effect on science, technology, and mathematics education for all students and on the public understanding and appreciation of science. This excerpt was taken from Partners in Education: A Strategy for Integrating Education and Public Outreach into NASA\u27s Space Science Programs . It indicates the importance and value NASA\u27s Office of Space Science places on education and the public\u27s understanding of science. It also represents a challenge to the space community as a whole that the quality and quantity of future space leaders is directly dependent upon their collective ability to revitalize science education. The following begins with a discussion about technology literacy, its value in the marketplace and its relationship to our K-16 educational system. It then focuses on the impact and importance of educational partnerships with the science community as a means of bringing real world science and technical resources to the K-12 classroom. And finally, It takes a look at a new partnership oriented, Internet based program, the Internet Science and Technology Fair. It is designed to nationally stimulate technology literacy in the classroom thereby encouraging students to pursue technical professions

Learning from Trump and Xi? Globalization and innovation as drivers of a new industrial policy. Bertelsmann GED Focus 2020

Technological innovations are essential drivers of longterm and sustainable growth. Accordingly, there currently is a debate in Germany and the EU as to whether a new, strategic industrial policy can be an answer to the complex dynamics of digitization. Products of this discussion are, for example, the Industrial Strategy 2030 published by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in November 2019 and the Franco-German Manifesto for a European Industrial Policy for the 21st Century. The focus here is on the question of how the EU and its member states can maintain their innovative and thus competitive ability in the face of diverse challenges. However, there is no standard recipe for building and expanding the innovative capacity of an economy. Different countries rely on different strategies that can be equally successful. An important distinguishing feature is the role of the state. A clear example of divergent innovation models are China and the USA. Although both countries have completely different approaches to an innovation-promoting industrial policy, both models are characterized by major technological successes. With an analysis of the Chinese and American innovation system, this study highlights the main features and success factors of both innovation models and discusses whether and to what extent these factors are transferable to the European and German case. Five fields of action for an innovation-promoting industrial policy in the EU and Germany emerge from this analysis • Implementation of a long-term innovation strategy • Expansion of venture capital • Expansion of cluster approaches at EU level • Thinking and strengthening of cybersecurity at EU level • Creation of uniform and fair conditions for competition In addition to these fields of action, which are relevant both for the EU and for individual member states, industrial policy measures in the following three areas could be useful for Germany. In particular: • Improvement of framework conditions for research and development • Gearing the education and research system more strongly towards entrepreneurship and innovation • State as a pioneer and trailblazer in new technologies In their implementation, however, strategic European and German industrial policies face a trade-off between the protection and promotion of legitimate self-interests on the one hand and the defense against economically damaging protectionism and ill-considered state interventionism on the other. The so-called “mission orientation” can make a significant contribution here: Accordingly, industrial policy should serve to address specific societal challenges (e. g. globalization, digitization, demographic change, climate change) and be coherently targeted towards these objectives. Furthermore, industrial policy is to be driven in parallel by different actors. Above all, it is a joint task of business and politics to enable a competitive business location where the state ensures good competition- promoting framework conditions and the private actors implement concrete actions