Video Tip: Why the US Needs Innovation and High Tech Manufacturing

If you want to show a 6 minute video that will set your semester on fire, try this interview with Henry Nothhaft, author of Great Again and former CEO of Tessera. Nothhaft starts by saying the only way the US can recover from the recession is to deal with the 5 million manufacturing  jobs lost in the past decade. He believes we can bring back high-tech manufacturing  with some basic tax and policy changes.

The US has the world’s 2nd highest corporate tax rate in the world (and California is the 48th worst in the US). Good tax policies are the reason Israel and Germany have had a revitalization of their manufacturing bases. And offshoring in high-tech is unnecessary when labor costs are only 3% of total product cost. Nothhaft points out that 70% of high-tech innovation goes on during production on the factory floor. Give up the factory and in 10-15 years “you have sown your own seeds of destruction”.

Nothhaft also takes on the US Patent Office and its 3.7 year average approval wait time. He points out that in Silicon Valley this is two or three product life cycles—an immeasurable delay. And finally, he asks for a new green card policy for foreign grads in technology areas. “We need to hang out a sign by the Statue of Liberty that says Geniuses Welcome“, he says, noting that the founders of Intel, Google, ebay, and Yahoo! were all immigrants.