The Worldwide Innovation Team has identified a number of countries for focused innovation activities. The national initiatives will be lead by the respective Country General Managers and supported by their Governmental Programs teams and coordinated with Communications and Corporate Affairs. We have selected a set of core issues for all the national innovation strategies: intellectual property policies; open standards; and innovation infrastructure projects. Additionally, we will customize other issues to address specific local needs, including: multidisciplinary R&D; development of a services science curriculum in universities; innovation metrics; the importance of long term strategies and investments and the development of an integrated national strategy to drive innovation.
We believe that innovation can be spurred by driving government adoption of specific innovation infrastructure-oriented projects, for example health care IT projects. Other technology areas may also drive growth and innovation, such as high performance computing, grid computing and RFID. We will be promoting that governments use such technologies to stimulate growth.
Finally, accessibility is a critical tool to unlock talent around the globe. We will promote accessibility as a tool to expand the talent/innovation pool and specifically urge governments to adopt globally harmonized standards to maximize the potential of people with accessibility needs.
