In testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Robert Atkinson argued that while more federal funding of R&D is needed, it needs to be coupled with more and better measures to enable the transfer of discoveries to the marketplace. This is because federal R&D funding levels have fallen, so we need to transfer discovery to commercialization much more efficiently if we are to avoid slowing the pace of innovation. Moreover, other nations are now more able to take advantage of discoveries stemming from U.S. investment in R&D, so if America does not commercialize its own R&D, competitors likely will. This is why reauthorizing the America COMPETES Act is so important: It focuses on increasing the rate at which federally funded knowledge creation catalyzes actual innovation and U.S. jobs.
