News & Updates

As we look to the future, we must recognize the United States’ strength in innovation & scientific discovery is built on a foundation of basic research. For over 70 years, our country has driven global innovation, expanding the frontiers of knowledge & making groundbreaking advancements in fields like physics, biology, & computer science. From the […]

The Council’s new initiative—Competitiveness Conversations Across America—aims to illuminate new cutting-edge strategies and pathways to broaden the geography of U.S. innovation beyond the coasts and deepen the demography of high-tech driven prosperity. This national conversation kicked-off at the end of April in Nashville, with co-hosts Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and University of Tennessee, Knoxville […]

In Greek mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and handicraft, conveying strength and prosperity through agriculture, inventions, and industry. She is credited as the inventor of the rake, plough, the yoke to harness oxen, bridle, chariot, and the art of shipbuilding and navigation. In America, we have had our own real world Athenas […]

Predicting the future is a business unto itself with pundits, futurists, scientists, engineers, and more constantly sharing their musings of the future. And this business has incredible implications on society - whether the predictions manifest or not. For example, take a look at just one survey of the future: the 1970 McGraw-Hill Survey of Technological […]

For decades, the U.S. economy has been caught in a whirlwind of global competition and rapid technological change. Some regions have soared, while others have seen their manufacturing economies crushed by competition from lower-wage countries.  Leaders in struggling regions have often looked to America’s high-tech superstars—such as Silicon Valley and Boston—for models to revitalize their […]

Every now and then, a scientific breakthrough changes the world. From the Copernican heliocentric model of the universe and electricity to penicillin and the discovery of the structure of DNA, these developments transform our globe — and another one has been reached. A new breakthrough with world changing potential.  For most of human history, why […]