Professor Appointed to Panel of Experts

Committee to Study Economic Benefits of Innovation

Carnegie Mellon's Ashish Arora, a professor of economics and public policy at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, has been appointed by U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez to serve on a new panel of experts investigating innovation. The group of academic and business leaders will examine new ways of measuring innovation and its impact on economic prosperity and high-living standards in the United States.

"American innovation is important to the vitality of our economy, and it is important to understand the impact innovation has on productivity and economic growth," said Secretary Gutierrez. "Getting a better understanding of how innovation contributes to our economy will help us craft policies to continue to grow and prosper."

Professor Arora researches the economics of technology-intensive industries, such as software, biotechnology and chemicals. He served as co-director of the university's Software Industry Institute and is on the editorial board of six academic journals.

"Since about 1997, I've been studying the growth of the software industry in India and other emerging economies," said Professor Arora, when speaking recently to Heinz students about his work. "From a policy perspective, there's a great deal of interest in India and China in policies for growing their respective software industries, but also in America on what the implications of the rise of these emerging economies are for American technical leadership, for American workforce needs and things of that kind."

Professor Arora will be serving on the Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee alongside other innovation experts in the business and academic communities, including: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp., Samuel Palmisano, CEO of IBM, and Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Carnegie Mellon's institutional values prioritize the role innovation has in advancing solutions. University leaders enjoy strong partnerships with many businesses that share these values, including Google and Microsoft, both represented on the new panel.