SRI chief: Now's the best time for innovation — just don't choke it

Curt Carlson, the president and chief executive of SRI International, has run the research institute in Silicon Valley for 11 years. SRI was spun out of Stanford University more than 60 years ago to commercialize research. First named Stanford Research Institute and later renamed SRI International, it became independent from Stanford University in 1970 and now has more than 2,200 researchers working on things such as the cool artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language processing, and other areas. Carlson sat down for an interview with VentureBeat on his predictions for the future.

VB: What will be hot?

CC: The good news is this is the best time for innovation in the history of the world. Every field is wide open. The internet doesn’t work. It isn’t fast enough or secure enough. We can’t find things as fast as we want. We can’t sort them. Nothing has helped in the last 20 years. Healthcare is going through its biggest transformation ever, from anatomy, chemistry, biology and physics to becoming an information industry. There are many opportunities there. Energy technologies are not where they need them to be in terms of cost. Education is transitioning to networks in the classroom. That has always been the dream. We tried one system that got transformation results in Texas and Florida. Media is being turned upside down and there are opportunities there. Every field has opportunities. The reason is that ones you turn things from atoms and muscle to bits, things move really fast. Almost everything is moving faster. There are factors of improvement from tens to thousands. Then you get these exponential improvements colliding with each other, like in biotechnology with computers, genomics, and chip technologies colliding. I’d say just about everything is hot.

VB: Are there some things to worry about?

CC: The only things to worry about is what our government does about regulation. They have to be very careful about regulations that hurt the formation of new small companies. It’s very hard to form new companies. If you make it too hard like they do in Europe, you can stop it cold. In America, almost all new jobs come from small companies. The Kaufman Foundation did a study where they said all net new jobs come from companies that are less than five years old. That is the magic of America. We have to be very thoughtful about that, making it easier for those new companies.

VB: How is America’s scorecard compared to other countries?
CC: America still does a very good job. We were rated fourth. Singapore was rated No. 1. I work with one of their R&D groups and we review their programs every year. They are very thoughtful about what it means to reduce overhead, costs, regulations. It’s pretty easy to see why they come out No. 1. We do OK. But I wish we were better. Much of Europe doesn’t do well. They have tough labor laws, taxes, regulations. Throw another rock in the boat and at some point the water starts coming over the sides.

VB: How do you feel about Silicon Valley and the waves of innovation we have seen?

CC: I think there will be wave after wave because of these exponentially increasing technologies. It’s hard to know which wave will hit. The opportunities are there in many areas.

VB: We have seen some bubbles burst a couple of times in the last decade. It seems like there is a great fear about them.

CC: Bubbles are wonderful when they are going up and terrible when they are coming down. If you hit it right, you can do great. But if you hit it wrong, it can destroy an enormous amount of value too. Given the diversity of technologies today, we have a better chance of avoiding big bubbles. But maybe I am making stuff up here. The thing I really believe is there is enormous opportunity. Here, I also have concerns about whether the federal and state governments will encourage the right policies. It’s the only thing that could snuff it out, given all of the advantages we have. There is a density of great schools, venture capitalists, support groups, financial people and lawyers. There is no density of knowledgeable people like there is here.

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