Ten Tech Policy Principles to Promote Innovation

This paper lists policies and principles we believe will promote innovation and allow the U.S. to maintain its technological leadership.
Recognize that the Unique Nature of Innovation Requires Global Linkages and Sufficient Investment in Research and Development
1. Enable the free movement of workers, investment capital, and information across borders to help ensure that resources are used efficiently. This will spur technological progress because innovation is a global phenomenon.
2. Maintain U.S. technological leadership by providing sufficient resources for our research institutions, including universities, national laboratories, NIH, NSF, and corporations. Focus public R&D spending on areas the private sector is least likely to fund—fundamental or basic research is more likely to fall into this category than is research aimed at commercialization.
Make Evaluation Fundamental to Proposed Programs
3. Evaluate programs rigorously to determine whether they are achieving their intended objectives in a cost-effective manner. Integrate evaluation criteria and methods into program design. Do not penalize agencies for finding that a program doesn’t work.
Encourage Innovation and Investment in ICT
4. Move away from public utility type regulation of broadband. Use antitrust enforcement based on sound economic analysis to address competition issues in the communications sector.
5. Allow innovative business models, a defining feature of the Internet economy, including ones based on price and non-price differentiation without requiring regulatory approval.
6. Streamline processes for making spectrum available, including by moving it from government to non-government control. Allow flexible uses for all spectrum licenses and continue to make them easier to trade. Develop economics-based criteria for allocating spectrum between licensed and unlicensed.
7. Recognize that 100 percent broadband connectivity is aspirational, but not realistic. Funds intended to boost broadband deployment should be distributed in ways that will generate the largest bang-for-the-buck, such as reverse auctions.
8. Adopt coherent privacy rules based on cost-benefit analysis and apply them consistently across the economy.
Promote Cybersecurity
9. Ensure that incentives are properly aligned for the private sector and government to implement effective cybersecurity procedures.
Ensure that Intellectual Property Rights Increase Innovation and Social Welfare
10. Ensure that intellectual property rights policies promote innovation and creativity and base reforms on sound data and analysis.