Manufacturing’s central role in global innovation Companies compete on the decisions they make. For years—even decades—in response to intensifying global competition, companies decided to outsource their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the ability to innovate and compete. Manufacturing, it turns out, really matters in an innovation-driven economy. In Producing Prosperity, Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih show the disastrous consequences of years of poor sourcing decisions and underinvestment in manufacturing capabilities. They reveal how today’s undervalued manufacturing operations often hold the seeds of tomorrow’s innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the US industrial sector. Only by reviving this “industrial commons” can the world’s largest economy build the expertise and manufacturing muscle to regain competitive advantage. America needs a manufacturing renaissance—for restoring itself, and for the global economy as a whole. This will require major changes. Pisano and Shih show how company-level choices are key to the sustained success of industries and economies, and they provide business leaders with a framework for understanding the links between manufacturing and innovation that will enable them to make better outsourcing decisions. They also detail how government must change its support of basic and applied scientific research, and promote collaboration between business and academia. For executives, policymakers, academics, and innovators alike, Producing Prosperity provides the clearest and most compelling account yet of how the American economy lost its competitive edge—and how to get it back.

The Manufacturing USA initiative seeks to reinforce U.S.-based advanced manufacturing through partnerships among industry, academia, and government. Started in 2012 and established with bipartisan support by the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act of 2014, the initiative envisages a nationwide network of research centers for manufacturing innovation. As of May 2017, 14 manufacturing innovation institutes had been established to facilitate the movement of early-stage research into proven capabilities ready for adoption by U.S. manufacturers. To better understand the role and experiences of the Manufacturing USA institutes to date, a committee of the Innovation Policy Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop on May 23, 2017 drawing together institute directors and manufacturing policy experts along with leaders from industry, academia, and government. Participants addressed the role of the manufacturing institutes in increasing advanced manufacturing in the United States, examined selected foreign programs designed to support advanced manufacturing, and reviewed recent assessments of existing institutes. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This volume contains six studies on current topics in macroeconomics. The first shows that while assuming rational expectations is unrealistic, a finite-horizon forward planning model can yield results similar to those of a rational expectations equilibrium. The second explores the aggregate risk of the U.S. financial sector, and in particular whether it is safer now than before the 2008 financial crisis. The third analyzes “factorless income,” output that is not measured as capital or labor income. Next, a study argues that the financial crisis increased the perceived risk of a very bad economic and financial outcome, and explores the propagation of large, rare shocks. The next paper documents the substantial recent changes in the manufacturing sector and the decline in employment among prime-aged Americans since 2000. The last paper analyzes the dynamic macroeconomic effects of border adjustment taxes.

World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.