On innovation, education, and building

Yesterday US President Obama gave the State of the Nation address, focusing on the need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the world. The speech is worth a read if you didn't catch it. What strikes me most is the tone of cooperation and conciliation, and the similarities with the changes we are navigating in the innovation system in Canada, and our need to focus on complementarity. Working together toward common social and economic productivity issues is clearly the way to future prosperity. Partisan fighting over who got what is a shadow of the past. Imaging ourselves into the future is perhaps more difficult to do, but certainly more worthwhile.