IW500: U.S. Faces Innovation ChallengeIW500: U.S. Faces Innovation Challenge

Suraj Prakash, VP of global delivery for Wipro, comes from the perspective of an outsourcing company executive who grew up in India, but who now lives in the Untied States. He thinks the primary education system in the United States is "excellent," well-funded, and has strong curricula in comparison to that of India. However, in India, kids want to get into tech because IT is perceived as a "sexy job."

Here, his son got the idea that IT was for "nerds" and that the cool job was investment banking. His daughter is in a "laptop school" and still the kids there don't want to get into IT. "We need to focus on creating that excitement around STEM education," he said.

Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, said that education is only one of many factors of global competitiveness, and that too much emphasis should not be placed on education. "It's really hard to argue against improving K-through-12 science and tech education, but the question is if that is the only thing to fix?" he said.

Training initiatives should extend beyond the traditional school system and become "K-through-grey" so that the country doesn't lose the incumbent capacity that's already out there as well as the war to get more PhD's than other countries.

Beyond that, he said, most of the federal policy prescriptions for innovation focus "all on the supply side," which neglects the need to also increase demand for more American IT workers. He argued that there should be more policies to create IT jobs in the United States.

Hira also said that it was foolhardy to think that by making IT a sexier career choice, the IT workforce would be more innovative and kids would want to go into IT. "Students are acting rationally," he said. "They go where the opportunities are. The argument that we can make it more sexy and that we need an LA-Engineered TV show -- there's some merit in that, but I don't think that's going to solve the problem."

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