This weekend, President Barack Obama announced that he will be appointing Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s Secretary of Technology to be the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer. We at the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) are pleased President Obama picked a CTO who recognizes the link between innovation and intellectual property.
Mr. Chopra gets it. He not only understands the importance of the IT industry to the American economy, but also how it can help improve the transparency and efficiency of government. We believe he will be a powerful, pragmatic voice for change in the government. He sees the value in collaborative development and cloud computing to the government, and is also very aware of the importance of IP to innovation and economic growth.
During Aneesh Chopra’s speech at the Internet Caucus "State of the Net" Conference earlier this year, ACT's Morgan Reed asked Chopra about the importance of innovation-based entrepreneurship to Virginia. In response, Chopra talked about the GAP Fund for investing in innovative startups in Virginia with significant intellectual property.
“We have a billion companies in Virginia that are service companies, but it is the grounding in intellectual property that, to us, is the secret,” said Chopra.
Chopra went on to talk about how MD, DC and VA spend more on R&D than California does, but the ability to commercialize that spending “stinks.” Therefore he has been working to “bring our research entities into a more intellectual property fluid-type model that is both protective of IP but stimulates entrepreneurship.”
Now THAT is change we can believe in! Good Luck Aneesh!