Building on the findings of the MIT PIE Commission, President L. Rafael Reif has announced his intention to create an MIT Innovation Initiative, and has selected two faculty members to lead the effort, professors Fiona Murray and Vladimir Bulovic ... more
In his letter to the community, President Reif charges the 19-member panel to deliver recommendations on next steps by January 31 ... more
"Industrial policy and globalization of innovation to the market" ... more
MIT report emphasizes need to turn U.S. innovation strengths into growth ... more
The 2013 MIT Production in the Innovation Economy Conference took place at MIT on September 20, 2013, and featured presentations from prominent government, academic, and industry leaders ... Presentations can be viewed here
The conference marked the release of two books detailing the study's findings: Making in America: From Innovation to Market and Production in the Innovation Economy ... more
discussing the MIT PIE study: "U.S. needs to step up manufacturing" ... more
Prof. Suzanne Berger with the MIT Task Force on the Production and Innovation ... more
discusses the MIT PIE Commission report. "Since 2011, MIT faculty from several disciplines have collaborated on a unique research project, Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE); the aim is to see how U.S. strengths in innovation can be turned into new production capabilities, to spur growth and new jobs." ... more
Bringing more innovation to market... more
A third industrial revolution: As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition, says Paul Markillie. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries ... more
Study group is tackling hard questions about what it takes to stoke renewal ... more
In more than four decades at MIT, political scientist Suzanne Berger has shifted from studying French peasants to spearheading research on how to revive U.S. indistry, featured in the January/February 2012 Technology Review ... more
In 1950, more than 30 percent of Americans were employed in manufacturing, working at jobs such as welding, machining and assembly. Today, that number has shrunk significantly: Manufacturing jobs make up less than 10 percent of the U.S. workforce. As the country seeks to reinvigorate its job market and move past an economic recession, the state of U.S. manufacturing has become a hotly debated topic. more
The United States became the world’s largest economy because we invented products and then made them with new processes. ... more
“Manufacturing is simply this huge engine of job creation.”... more
‘Lasting economic growth emerges from the most advanced science, mathematics and technology,’ she says. ... more
Manufacturing is not merely about giving people jobs. The next generation of technological innovation is intimately tied to production processes... more
At the invitation of Barack Obama, MIT President Susan Hockfield will co-chair the administration’s new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), the White House announced... more
Over the last few decades, the sector of the U.S. economy devoted to manufacturing has lost ground to the services sector. The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has declined from nearly 20 million in 1979 to about 12 million today. Yet as the recent global recession suggests, services can propel the economy only so far. There is no substitute for making tangible, useful products. ... more
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced a new national program intended to spur clean-energy innovation, in remarks at a forum at MIT. “We’re challenging entrepreneurs to move technologies invented in our National Laboratories out of the lab and into the marketplace,” Chu said. Examples of those technologies, he noted, range from software that helps reduce energy use in buildings to ways of converting solar power into thermal energy on demand. ... more
Some forms of technology – think, for example, of computer chips – are on a fast track to constant improvements, while others evolve much more slowly. Now, a new study by researchers at MIT and other institutions shows that it may be possible to predict which technologies are likeliest to advance rapidly, and therefore may be worth more investment in research and resources. ... more