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The Growth Lab's Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Speaker: William B. Bonvillian, Lecturer at MIT, and Senior Director for special projects at MIT’s Office of Open Learning
Despite longstanding opposition from mainstream economists and neoliberal perspectives to industrial policy, the United States, confronted by advanced technology competition from China, climate change, and a global pandemic, adopted from 2020-2022 a series of major industrial policy programs. Although the U.S. Defense Department has long practiced industrial policy approaches, and the U.S. has followed industrial economic policies in its agriculture, transportation, electric power and healthcare sectors, the new programs focused on promoting technology innovation, so can be labeled “industrial innovation policy.” The large scale of these efforts amounted to a new step for the U.S. in non-defense sectors.
This talk will review six major examples of new U.S. industrial innovation policies. All involve federal government interventions into the post-research phases of innovation, from development to prototyping, testing, demonstration, and production.
Whether attending in person or virtually, please register in advance.
About the speaker:
William B. Bonvillian is a Lecturer at MIT, and Senior Director for special projects at MIT’s Office of Open Learning, leading research projects on workforce education and technology issues. From 2006 until 2017, he was director of MIT’s Washington Office, supporting MIT’s longstanding role in science policy at the national level. He served as an advisor to MIT’s major cross-campus national policy initiatives on advanced manufacturing, energy technology, life science convergence and online education. He was an MIT representative to President Obama's industry-university Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) which formed U.S. manufacturing policies in the 2011-2016 period. He teaches courses on innovation systems and science and technology policy at MIT in the and Science Technology and Society and Political Science Departments. Previously, he worked for over 15 years on science and innovation issues as a senior advisor in the U.S. Senate, and earlier was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation.