Ideas for Innovation

Extracted from Thomas D. Kuczmarski's article on BusinessWeek.

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Graduated Tax credits for R&D Investments
The more a company spends as a percentage of its sales on R&D, technology advancements, and other market-building activities, the greater the tax savings realized. By having this set up on a graduated scale, corporate taxpayers would have a strong incentive to invest more money in seed-planting today, a strategic practice that is often put off when companies are managing for the short term. Any U.S.-based company would be eligible for the break regardless of where its research is actually conducted. We'd still be better off for the added potential.

Intellectual Property Auction
Ocean Tomo, a Chicago financial firm, has established an auction system for intellectual property rights and patents. Businesses frequently have many more marketable ideas than the capacity to launch them. Whether it's conducted by the government or outsourced to a private company, a national IP auction would provide businesses with a secondary income stream, enabling them to get up-front cash or licensing fees for proven concepts, inventions, and prototypes that are otherwise sitting around unused. Additionally, these ideas would end up in the hands of businesses eager to take them to market.

Innovation Index Fund
We can help put private money to work stimulating business investment. How? By establishing a unit trust fund to attract public investment in innovation. The companies in the index would be ones who have been the most successful in the recent past, thanks to their innovation. Specifically, companies would be selected based on their financial performance, R&D investments, and creation of new technologies, categories, and markets. The key will be to select companies that innovate year-in, year-out as a core business strategy. Management fees would cover the costs of administering the fund. The benefits to investors will be higher returns and a collective investment in the future of our economic health.

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Source
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2009/id2009039_554797.htm

Author: Thomas D. Kuczmarski is founder and president of Kuczmarski & Associates, an innovation consultancy based in Chicago. The author of five books, Kuczmarski has also taught product and service innovation at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management for 27 years.