DavidCruickshank said:

Is the U.S. the undisputed leader when it comes to innovation? I suppose this is open to endless study and debate. Amazon has plenty of titles on the topic focused on U.S. firms and there are countless thesis' and dissertations too (many of which spawned many of the most recent books in print today). Even if U.S. firms lead with innovation I wonder if it is limited when examined in  the context to what James Utterback describes in his work on the subject of innovation dynamics. He breaks innovations into two groupings; those that are assembled and those that are singularly formulated like Rayon. He describes both groups of  innovations needing to pass through 3 phases. The first is discovery phase where all the prototyping occurs and just getting the basic innovation established; little to no energy goes into optimizing things like the tools or production processes needed to create the final product. The second is a transitionary phase where there is a blend of ongoing development of features, benefits as well as beginning to look at process improvements for making it. The last phase is where the innovation is mature and has emerged as dominant among all competitive offerings. The lifecycle of improvement of the innovation concludes and even process improvements begins to subside.

What I wonder about now is if the U.S. leads in innovation, does it lead across this lifecycle or just at the beginning? Do companies get the prototype worked out on paper, maybe build a working model but then once a company determines that the innovation is technically and economically feasible, that it goes outside of the U.S. to physically produce it through outsourcing? If so then maybe from an innovation perpsective America never leads in terms of the underlying process improvements developed along the way to determine the optimal way to commercialize an innovation.