Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge.

• Author: Reim, Christopher
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

ADVANTAGE: HOW AMERICAN INNOVATION CAN OVERCOME THE ASIAN CHALLENGE

Adam Segal

(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 249 pages.

Technological innovation is a critical source of national wealth and prosperity and, despite the gains of other nations, the United States continues to maintain a decisive global edge. Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge takes on key questions regarding America's ability to continually reinvent itself in the face of rising economic power of emerging markets, specifically China and India. Broad in scope, Advantage builds a cohesive framework for policies that touch America's inventive soul, from education and immigration to collaboration among business, academia and government.

Adam Segal is a senior fellow for counterterrorism and national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a recognized expert on China. With a tendency to focus on competition from China, Segal identifies three themes that guide his argument for driving new U.S.-led technology rather than simply protecting the old: the U.S. advantage in the so-called software of innovation, i.e., the cultural foundations for promoting new ideas and talent; the interplay between the high (policy) and low (trade) politics of innovation; and an appreciation for the distinctions between local and global innovation.

Two...