“Sure, it was positive that President Obama used the word “innovate” so many times in his State of the Union Tuesday, for example, saying “we need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” But Bruce Nussbaum‘s day-later reaction in the Harvard Business Review argues “harsh truths” President Obama omitted include that very little actual innovation takes place within big business, that the U.S. innovation policy is misguided, and that China‘s “Fast Follower” policy is superior to ours. After a R&D survey showed that only 9 percent of U.S. companies had any product, service, or process innovation between 2006 and 2008, economist Michael Mandel observed, “you can’t be an innovation economy if only 9 percent of your companies are innovating.” - Source
