CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It has been said there is nothing new under the sun. This often seems true when working with advanced technology. A problem is recognized, a creative solution is discovered, and then the same concept can be found in many archival publications.

This is also true for patent art where a uniquely brilliant insight is soon found covered by one or more patents, either domestic or foreign.

This, on the surface, appears to validate the adage and provide another reason for companies not to focus on innovation. Innovation can be expensive.

The commercial value comes once the idea is taken to market, the other end of the process, which is often the stumbling block. It is easy to focus on what has worked in the past, and often uncomfortable to consider what might work better in the future. What can then follow is a lack of focus on innovation and a move to downsize or sometimes eliminate research-and-development centers; a trend that could become disastrous if followed nationwide.

It turns out that reality doesn't support the saying. Even with the millions of existing patents worldwide, the growth rate of patent art continues to rise. Plus, while it is more expensive today to support research and development and to then publish the same, the number of published referred articles worldwide is also on the rise. There is a continuing growth in new art, admittedly small in percentage to the total in the open literature, but sufficient to drive technology forward.

So, where is the contradiction? It is clear that several companies have cut back their in-house R&D efforts, but some of that work has since been sent out to contract development centers or university-based research centers. Shopping around for better and more efficient solutions by outsourcing or simply releasing undeveloped ideas and technologies to those with specialized talents is often more cost effective. Plus, it eliminates the need to sustain some bricks and mortar. Focusing on the new ideas while letting others perform the development processes can make good business sense especially for those companies that specialize in production and not product development.

This focus on specialization, knowing what you are good at and staying that course, plus the release of new technology not in your wheelhouse, has created a growth spike in start-ups. This is particularly the case in the advanced technology fields, which will in the future bolster the nation's overall R&D efforts, not to mention the learning curve advances it provides to the next-generation work force.

While these new companies are often on a smaller scale, they can provide a future source for partnerships, mergers and acquisitions.

A spirit of focused innovation with a strong view to future prosperity is a key to the United States' ability to regain and then remain a world technology leader. To do this will require an even more intense commitment to research and development, along with the creation of cooperative environments and agreements between willing partners, and even competitors. It will also require an understanding of the interplay that needs to develop between R&D centers that are nationally and academically based, and those that are supported commercially. Maybe even more important are cooperative involvements that need to be encouraged with fledgling start-up efforts that often involve basement and home garage laboratories and testing facilities.

Some cooperative efforts have already started to appear in direct opposition to the notion that diverse entities cannot work together. It turns out that most of the individuals who preach that we cannot cooperate on R&D efforts using elements of government, industry, and academia are the very ones that hinder the activity. The imposed, and often supposed, rules that keep these groups apart are buried in the minutiae of overdeveloped bureaucracies, an overzealous legal system, and the comfort that comes from doing things the way we have always done them.

The other problems come from the notion that someone else will handle or take care of the problems; industry will find the solution, academia will train the next captain of industry or invent the next disruptive technology or, of course, the government will recognize, solve and fund the needed research and development efforts, so we don't have to worry about a thing. How has that been working for us lately?

Overall, these notions of any kind of a panacea are at best nearsighted and at worst delusional. It is true that these government supported R&D centers, along with the academically supported ones, are great storehouses of intellectual capital and physical resources, but their ability to react to the needs of their commercial counterparts (the people that make and then take things to market) has been at best, dismal. We still fail to preplan our measurables, to require deliverables and on the subject of accountability, well, that is often nonexistent. No for-profit company could operate this way.

So, is there anything new under the sun? Probably not a lot. But the small amount that does surface, or sneak through, is often all that is needed to guarantee our future economic prosperity. What we need is a little more focus and a lot more willingness to cooperate from the very groups we have entrusted to look after our wellbeing.

For those who argue that it has already been invented or studied, you have missed out on one of the most important attributes of our species -- a hopeful view of the future along with the ability to create the innovations that will get us there.

Smith is a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and director of the Center for Industrial Research Applications at WVU.