As always, thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

• Cisco’s Patent Strategy: It’s More Than Numbers [BusinessWeek: NEXT]
  Innovation—at least as measured by patents—seems to fading in the U.S. For the first time, moreover, foreigners obtained more patents than U.S. residents.
• Technology First, Needs Last [jnd]
  Don Norman has come to an interesting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.
• Boyer Lectures [Radio National]
  General Peter Cosgrove, AC MC (ret’d) presented the Boyer Lectures, from 8 November 2009, with his 40 years of military experience and service to Australia placing him in a unique position to talk about the challenges and opportunities faced by society today and into the future.
• Head to Head: Innovation in China and the US [Innovate on Purpose]
  A survey comparing the attitudes and expectations about the US and China in regard to innovation finds some relatively unexpected differences, and some safe assumptions.

As always, thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated.

This issue:

• Engineers rule [Forbes]
  At American auto companies, finance guys and marketers rise to the top. Not at Honda.
• China’s long road to innovation [strategy+business]
  Beijing is mandating an increase in home-grown R&D, but Chinese companies face long odds in meeting international standards of innovation.
• Cisco CEO John Chambers on speeding up innovation [BusinessWeek]
  In Chambers’ view, business is on the verge—not in the midst—of a dramatic transformation, a huge leap forward in productivity built on collaboration made possible by Web 2.0-style tools similar to YouTube, FaceBook, and Wikipedia but adapted to the corporate environment. “Our children, with their social network[ing], have presented us with the future of productivity,” he emphatically told the crowd of about 4,500 executives.
• The kids are alright [Economist]
  Worries about the damage the internet may be doing to young people has produced a mountain of books—a suitably old technology in which to express concerns about the new. Robert Bly claims that, thanks to the internet, the “neo-cortex is finally eating itself”. Today’s youth may be web-savvy, but they also stand accused of being unread, bad at communicating, socially inept, shameless, dishonest, work-shy, narcissistic and
  indifferent to the needs of others.