You’ll search in vain for the word “entrepreneur” in Geoff Colvin‘s latest Fortune magazine column, but this reader gets the sense that Colvin is describing a lamentable decline in the entrepreneurial spirit when he documents setbacks for America’s “mighty culture of innovation.”
Innovation and creativity are what make economies hum, and they have always been America’s biggest advantage. They’re difficult traits to quantify, so we sometimes overlook their importance. Major institutions have tried to measure them anyway — but before we look at the results, what do you think? Reflect on your travels and experiences and ask where you’re most likely to find a life-changing new technology, a startling business model that upends an industry, or a torrent of new products and services — most of which will fail, but some of which will thrive. No country has a monopoly, but most people I encounter, regardless of nationality, still think the odds are highest in the U.S.
Research, imperfect though it is, supports that intuitive sense. The Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management has compiled a Global Creativity Index that ranks the U.S. No. 2, just behind Sweden and ahead of Finland. The U.S. is the only major economy in the top 10; Japan is No. 30, China No. 58. The new World Innovation Index from the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization ranks the U.S. fifth, also among a sea of tiny economies, led by Switzerland and Sweden. For innovativeness at a mammoth scale, no country comes close to the U.S.
Which raises the critical question of why. The answer is clear but even harder to measure: It’s the culture. We root for the person who takes a chance, and we mostly look past failures. I’m not sure where else a guy who burned $45 million of venture capital funding in a failed business could get his next idea financed, but Daniel Dreymann, co-founder of forgotten Goodmail Systems, has done it with Mowingo, a mobile commerce venture. If you didn’t know about him, it’s because his story isn’t rare. We’re hooked on new ideas of every kind — big, little, silly, profound. Innovation is more than NASA’s Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. The Taco Bell Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco Supreme is an innovation (and a highly successful one), and Sweden and Switzerland aren’t going to give it to you.
The danger is that America’s secret, its culture, may be changing for the worse. Future indicators are troubling. A World Values Survey that asked people how important it is “to think up new ideas and be creative” placed the U.S. 10th, and major economies — Germany, France, the U.K. — ranked higher. A gauge of creativity in children that has been used in the U.S. for over 50 years, the Torrance test, shows that after rising for decades, kids’ creativity began declining around 1990, and the accumulated drop is now significant, with the deepest declines showing up in elementary school children.
