Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

ITIF advances pragmatic policy solutions in five key areas:

INNOVATION AND COMPETITIVENESS: As nations engage in a race for global advantage in innovation, ITIF champions a new policy paradigm that ensures businesses and national economies can compete successfully by spurring public and private investment in foundational areas such as research, skills, and 21st century infrastructure.

IT AND DATA: As every sector of the global economy and nearly every facet of modern society undergo digital transformation, ITIF advocates for policies that spur not just the development of IT innovations, but more importantly their adoption and use throughout the economy.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS: As the Internet has evolved from an occasional-use resource to a pervasive, always-on broadband ecosystem, the networking technologies underpinning it have developed faster than legal and regulatory frameworks can adjust. ITIF advocates for policies to ensure that networks of the future can continue developing to their fullest potential.

TRADE AND GLOBALIZATION: ITIF believes that growing the innovation economy requires tight and deep integration of global markets—but with the critical caveat that this integration must come with strong commitments to openness and robust, market-oriented national competitiveness policies, not protectionist market distortions.

LIFE SCIENCES, AGRICULTURAL BIOTECH, AND ENERGY: ITIF believes innovation is central to addressing global climate change while increasing economic growth, boosting international competitiveness, and eliminating energy poverty. Similarly, ITIF champions innovation as an essential catalyst for promoting human health, agricultural productivity, and ecological sustainability.

There are three strategic thrusts to ITIF's research programs and educational activities:

* Setting the policy agenda on technology, innovation, and global competition issues by producing original research reports and analytical commentary;

* Shaping public debate by hosting events, giving speeches and presentations, providing official testimony, and serving as expert issue analysts in the news media; and

* Advising policymakers through direct interaction in Washington, DC, and other state, national, and regional capitals around the world.

ITIF's greatest asset is the expertise and relentless drive of its staff, which is led by its president and founder, Robert D. Atkinson, an internationally recognized policy scholar and widely published author whom The New Republic has named one of the “three most important thinkers about innovation," Washingtonian Magazine has called a “Tech Titan," and Government Technology Magazine has judged to be one of the 25 top “Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of Information Technology."

Under Atkinson, ITIF's comparatively small team of policy analysts and fellows includes authors and recognized experts in the fields of economics, tax policy, trade, telecommunications, privacy, cybersecurity, and life sciences, among many others.

With an annual operating budget of less than $4 million, ITIF's team punches far above its weight, producing 35 to 40 major research reports per year; hosting at least that many events; publishing 100 or more op-ed articles, essays, and commentaries in the press; and participating in hundreds of official meetings, testimonies, and government filings on a wide range of policy matters. And much more.

ITIF's mission is ongoing, but in the last few years alone:

* Policymakers in the United States and Europe have pointed to ITIF's research on the economic harms of government surveillance policies to build support for essential reforms;

* Governments from Singapore to Sweden have developed national innovation strategies based in significant part on a framework that ITIF developed and promoted in its book Innovation Economics;

* The U.S. Congress has advanced legislation incorporating ITIF recommendations on a wide range of issues, including research and development, manufacturing support policy, technology transfer, and taxes;

* The White House has relied on ITIF's work in a variety of areas, including R&D tax reform, manufacturing technology, and broadband policy; and

* U.S. states, including Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, have developed innovation policies based on ITIF proposals.