Rep Anna Eshoo is all ears on the innovation economy

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) convened local tech, government and academic leaders with US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as part of the Democrats' "listening tour" to find out what is needed to make the US the world's innovation capital.

According to the 2015 Global Innovation Index, the US ranks fifth in the world when it comes to innovation based on 79 indicators, such as the quality of a country's education institutions, its workforce, its market sophistication and the impact of what is actually produced. We are behind Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands. But we are ahead of Finland. A decade ago, Rep Eshoo helped launch a similar effort, and from those yearlong discussions, an "innovation agenda" was born. The wheels of government move slowly, but the economic crisis of 2008-09 put a fire under public officials. Major policy changes included public investment for cleantech projects through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the expanded deployment of broadband and, most recently, making permanent the research-and-development tax credit.