I think government finds itself in a difficult position. Innovation as a sort of science is misunderstood entirely.
There's this view that innovation equals invention It's promulgated in the popular media. We watch Dragons' Den, somebody has a better mouse trap, “Give me money, we'll move forward.” It has nothing to do with innovation. Innovation is slog; it takes decades to get from beginning to end.
The work that we are doing at my company began in the United States in the 1970s and ended in 1998, when the U.S. government declared that, well, you know, we don't need this because there's an infinite amount of oil and it's always going to be $10 a barrel, so why bother with this biofuel mess that you're dealing with?
It sat on the shelf for 10 more years. I discovered reading the Washington Post, and decided I was going to try to do it. Lots of people have tried what we're doing, we've just gotten the furthest.
There's this idea amongst legislators that they can legislate innovation. On Thursday, we will all be creative and we will all find a solution, and this will result in the next generation of jobs. That's kind of not how it works. There are innovation investment models that do work. The problem is that they're unfortunately difficult for governments to adopt, because they require a lot of failure, and governments don't really like failure on their investments.
I don't think the understanding is there that there is no failure in innovation. What you have is a lack of success, which is very different. If government were willing to lose money on its investments in innovation, it would be much more successful in achieving the innovation it seeks. That's not how programs are designed. They're designed so that they have....As keepers of the public purse, quite correctly, government works hard to make sure it is not throwing good money after bad, but most innovation occurs by throwing good money after bad.