Since 2005, the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy the National Academies (STEP), has carried out a broad survey of possibilities to improve innovation policy of the USA. From a European point of view, this work seems to have reached a turning point by establishing a kind of intellectual consensus. But that may be an optical illusion?
Formally, during the XX° century, there was neither industrial nor innovation public policy. It was politically correct to say that market laws were enough to generate and optimize innovation. Nevertheless U.S. is not the world champion of innovation by chance. During the last seventy years, behind the politically correct arguments, we do find a strategy to build the U.S. military and industrial preeminence on a strong scientific strategy and a large public procurement. By now, we can see that the U.S. wants to maintain this leadership, even if it needs a revolution in their mind and in the “politically correct”. History enlightens the present change.
