Innovation Economics explains that economic growth hinges on the ability to innovate. While the U.S. has watched its manufacturing sector decline at a rate faster than during the Great Depression, shifted its R&D overseas, and squandered its ample resources on risky speculation, scores of nations have done the opposite and made investment in innovation a top priority. The similarities in the nature and causes of the decline experienced by both the United States and the United Kingdom are truly striking. Both nations failed to enact the right innovation-supporting policies, and both have paid the price with industrial decline. Remarkably, virtually all the factors that historians and economists attribute to the causes of British industrial decline almost exactly match the U.S. experience.
