KPCB’s John Doerr interviewed Intel’s Craig Barrett at the Aspen Ideas Festival on the impact of technology on our society and dives into the topic of the sustainability of American competitiveness in innovation. This topic is front and center for the American venture capital industry, as the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) declared yesterday that a U.S. capital markets crisis exists for the start-up community. Just as the capital markets problems for emerging US companies are structural and have been building for years, Barrett accurately points to underlying structural issues in the U.S. educational system that put America at risk of losing its ascendance in innovation leadership.

Some ominous signs– Intel used to make 90% of its investments in the US– today the split is 50% US, 50% Asia. While the U.S. still has the best engineering schools in the world, Barrett points out that 60% of PhD graduates from US universities are foreign nationals. He notes that, due to our current visa policy, the US is stupidly sending them home after the US taxpayer has subsidized their education in this country. Watch the video:

Related posts:

1. Aspen Ideas Festival: Peter Hirshberg Interviews Jim Steyer About How Children Must Learn Responsible Digital Citizenship on the Web
2. Irshad Manji from the Aspen Ideas Festival on Ijtihad and Interfaith Marriage in Islam
3. Aspen Ideas Festival—The Founding Fathers of Blogging Discuss the End of Media
4. American Innovation Is In Crisis: Why and How To Fix It
5. Confusing Risk Capital with Systemic Risk– Venture Capital Catalyzes Unlevered Economic Growth, NOT SYSTEMIC RISK

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Adult Education, Aspen Institute, Entrepreneur, VC Board Best Practices, Venture Capital, Web/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.