How Obama Can Boost High Tech: Forrester
George F. Colony, Chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, has some ideas about how Barack Obama can breathe new life into the U.S. high technology industry.
In a blog , Colony says that Obama should work to "return America to time which spawned HP, Microsoft, Dell, Wang, Apple, DEC, Compaq, Cisco, Sun, and many other great companies."
Some other ideas:
- Obama needs to create an environment in which a new area of competition for tech can be invented. This will help develop the new generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates but regulation must be eased and big companies must not be allowed to gobble up promising upstarts.
- Strong government steps might be necessary. Examples include Richard Nixon who hit IBM with antitrust action that resulted in more competition and Ronald Reagan whose support for the AT&T breakup opened a new area for telecommunications expansions.
- Government spending, particularly as part of Obama's infrastructure imrpovements, could be targeted at tech. He argues that in the 1950s, the formation of the anti-aircraft and missile NORAD system spawned minicomputers, the Apollo space program furthered transistors and the Arpanet and Milnet in the 1970s and 1980s laid the foundation for the Internet.
- Sarbanes-Oxley should be scrapped or greatly modified. Its bureaucracy and cost has hurt small tech firms.
- Obama's plan to greatly expand broadband could create 500,000 or so new jobs.