Putting Creativity and Innovation to Work: Continuing Higher Education's Role in Shifting the Educational Paradigm.

We hear the refrain again and again, especially recently: The success of the uS economy has always been its ability to innovate, create, invent, and commercialize groundbreaking discoveries. Today, we seem to be losing our edge and have begun to suffer an “innovation deficit,” a phrase coined by Secretary of Commerce Gary locke in his remarks to the President’s Council of advisors on Science and Technology, January 7, 2010. as locke further noted: our balance of trade in advanced technology products turned nega• tive in 2002. Industries that used to be dominated by american companies are • now led by companies in Europe and asia. america has created no net new jobs over the past decade, and me• dian wages have remained flat. as a society, our appreciation for analytical, predictive, and linear abilities and how to teach them has taken precedence over more creative,