ITIF Issue Areas

For a menu of actionable ideas for policymakers to foster innovation, growth, and progress, see ITIF’s “Tech Policy To-Do List.”

Clean Energy Innovation:

Innovation is central to addressing global climate change while increasing economic growth, boosting international competitiveness, and eliminating energy poverty. ITIF’s Center for Clean Energy Innovation seeks to accelerate the transition of the domestic and global energy systems to low-carbon resources. Areas of focus include:

Climate-Tech Commercialization: Policies to accelerate adoption of clean-energy and emissions-reducing technologies and practices.

Climate-Tech RD&D: Public and private investments to invent and improve technologies with the potential to reduce carbon emissions significantly.

Global Clean Energy Innovation: Worldwide efforts and supporting national policies to foster a transition to innovative clean energy resources.

Innovation and Competitiveness:

As nations engage in a race for global advantage in innovation, ITIF champions a new policy paradigm that ensures businesses and national economies can compete successfully by spurring public and private investment in foundational areas such as research, skills, and 21st century infrastructure. Our areas of focus include:

Competitiveness: Analysis of the many factors and policies driving national competitiveness, including improving innovation ecosystems and the technical capacity of high-value-added industries.

Defense and National Security: examining defense innovation issues, including weapons systems, innovation in defense and homeland security agencies, and the role of defense R&D in spurring innovation and competitiveness.

Economic Theory: Assessing the negative impact of conventional neo-Keynesianism and neoclassical economics on the 21st century economy and promoting “Innovation Economics” as a sounder alternative.

Emerging Technologies: Analysis of issues surrounding the development and adoption of transformative new technologies—from drones and advanced robotics to 3D printing and digital currencies.

Intellectual Property: analysis of how appropriately governed intellectual property protections—including patents, copyright, trademarks, and trade secrets—drive innovation.

Skills and Future of Work: Building skills through science, technology, engineering, and math education; use of technology in primary and secondary school; higher education reform; innovations such as massive open online courses; and incumbent worker-training policies.

Manufacturing: Examining current trends and encouraging continued innovation in the manufacturing sector through increased public and private investment.

Productivity: Analyzing past, present, and future trends in productivity, and advancing policies to drive robust productivity growth, including through tech-based automation.

Regulation and Antitrust: How and why governments should craft regulatory policies that stimulate instead of inhibiting innovation and competitiveness—featuring the work of ITIF’s Schumpeter Project, which advances dynamic competition policy in which innovation is a central concern for antitrust enforcement.

Science and R&D: Promoting public and private investment in research and development through public funding for research at national laboratories and universities, tax incentives to encourage business R&D, and policies to spur technology transfer from lab to market.

State and Local: assessing state and local technology and innovation policies, and benchmarking progress in the broader transition to the new economy.

Taxes and Budget: How tax policy and budgets can boost investment, competitiveness, and economic growth.

IT and Data:

As every sector of the global economy and nearly every facet of modern society undergo digital transformation, ITIF advocates for policies that spur not just the development of IT innovations, but more importantly their adoption and use throughout the economy. Focus areas include:

Accessibility: How to improve people’s access to technology—and how technology can improve access to jobs, education, and the public square, particularly for those with disabilities.

Artificial Intelligence: Issues related to AI, including competitiveness, governance, ethics, development, and adoption.

AR/VR: How immersive technologies can transform the ways people communicate, work, and learn.

Cybersecurity: How governments and the private sector can improve the security and resiliency of computers and networks.

Data Innovation: Issues and trends affecting big data, open data, data analytics, and the Internet of Things.

E-Government: How information technology (IT) can improve delivery of public services.

Health IT: Use of IT to drive health care innovation, lower costs, and improve the quality of care.

Internet: Issues related to taxation, e-commerce, digital copyright, global Internet governance, and digital currencies.

Privacy: Protecting people’s privacy and safeguarding personal information without stifling the innovation and commerce needed to drive a robust Internet ecosystem.

Public Safety: How technological advances in areas such as data analytics and high-quality video can enhance national security and emergency response to promote public safety.

Transportation: How IT can transform not just our vehicles but our entire transportation infrastructure.

Life Sciences & Agricultural Biotech:

Innovation is essential to promoting human health, agricultural productivity, and ecological sustainability. Focus areas include:

Agricultural Biotech: Supporting advances in plant and animal biotechnology to increase agricultural productivity and sustainably boost production of food, feed, and fiber.

Life Sciences: Supporting advances in human biotechnology; pharmaceuticals; and health care policy outside the realm of IT.

Telecommunications:

As the Internet has evolved from an occasional-use resource to a pervasive, always-on broadband ecosystem, the networking technologies underpinning it have developed faster than legal and regulatory frameworks can adjust. This has led to complex policy challenges that must be overcome to ensure that networks of the future can develop to their fullest potential. Focus areas include:

Broadband: advocating policies to accelerate deployment, access, and adoption of high-speed Internet, and encourage continued network innovation.

Wireless: analyzing policies and trends related to wireless technology, spectrum management and sharing, and radio usage rights.

Trade and Globalization:

Growing the innovation economy requires tight and deep integration of global markets—but with the critical caveat that this integration must come with strong commitments to openness and robust, market-oriented national competitiveness policies, not protectionist market distortions. Focus areas include:

Developing Economies: Critiquing conventional development models that are more suited to the 20th century than the 21st; analyzing developing nations’ innovation potential; and advocating for the most effective technology and innovation policies.

Trade: Promoting robust trade, especially in innovation-based industries, and curbing the spread of innovation mercantilism in all its forms.