KEEPING U.S. INDUSTRY COMPETITIVE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Innovation and new technologies are universally understood to be critical to continued United States competitiveness in the global marketplace. Questions such as: Is the U.S. sufficiently supporting basic research? Has the relationship between industry and academia been negatively impacted by global

Science and Engineering Indicators (Indicators), a compendium of quantitative measures of the state of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise, is compiled and published every two years by the National Science Board (Board), the 24-member policy oversight board of the National Science Foundation and a science policy advisory board to Congress and the President. In its review of the 2008 Indicators, elaborated in a policy companion piece, "Research and Development: Essential Foundation for U.S. Competitiveness in a Global Economy," the Board identified several concerns related to U.S. industrial competitiveness, including data on the status of basic research in the U.S., data on hightechnology manufacturing and trade, and measures of intellectual property and innovation.