Manj države, več podjetnosti

Spet odličen članek na Economist.com: "The best thing that governments can do to encourage innovation is get out of the way". To vemo, ampak vprašanje je, kako to prodati javnosti, volivcem, vsem, ki komaj čakajo, kaj bo država naredila za njih. In kako državne uradnike, ki jim ta pričakovanja dajo delo. In politike, ki jim to osmisli življenje.

Dva bistvena odstavka:

The EU has an official target to raise government R&D spending to 3% of GDP and there is much angst over patents—an obsession that Japanese planners share. The latest edition of “Science, Technology and Innovation in Europe”, an annual report by Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Commission, reveals exactly what is wrong. It is chock full of figures, broken down by region and industry, of research spending, patents filed, scientists employed and other important-sounding variables. The problem is that these are all inputs into the innovation process, not outputs. There is only a cursory discussion of venture capital and no attention paid at all to entrepreneurship—the most powerful way to turn ideas into valuable products and services.

...

However, there is an even more important factor than money: culture. Nokia's success was not the result of far-sighted planning or subsidy by the government of Finland. One Nokia executive confides: “The biggest boost to our firm was the deregulation that followed the second world war and the government's avoidance of protectionism.”