Is America Stuck in "Drip Innovation"?
When innovation becomes geopolitical
The US has been in an epidemic for two decades—one that has been progressively getting worse. It has been quiet, without a formal name, and yet, its effect has been visible to those who want to see it.
It is an innovation epidemic. What is that, you may ask?
There are two parts to innovation. The first is the process of innovating—refining an existing service, taking a product and making it better, or transforming X into Y so it generates new value. The second part is leveraging that innovation. Once a firm has “innovated,” how does it take it to the market? Often, this is not a black and white calculation. Other aspects come into play, like competition, a broader ecosystem of products, consumer readiness, product saturation, etc.
Yet, regardless, most businesses, hungry for greater growth, marketshare, and customers, have sought to bring the “core” of their innovation to the market—a service, a feature, an entire product that embodies what the business has unlocked.
Innovation is what differentiated companies and underscored competition.
In America, the most innovative nation in modern history, a different logic has taken over many organizations. Instead of unleashing their innovation on the market, it is being cut down to size, over and over again. Firms are squeezing their innovation across product cycles and timelines. This is an inversion of the old models.
It is what I call “drip innovation.” Some companies are giving drops of innovation, packaged as huge breakthroughs or even transformation. In reality, there is nothing new. Drip innovation should be ringing alarm bells in Washington. If it is not fixed, it could roll back America’s footprint.
👁 GEOPOLITICAL FORESIGHT ON INNOVATION
So far, with drip innovation, Investors and shareholders seem unaffected. And consumers have unknowingly begun making purchasing decisions, not based on features or capabilities, but other variables: interoperability with other products, access to payment plans and brand preference and perception. Innovation was supposed to supercede all this and win customers. Now it is the opposite, where other factors (e.g., a 24-month payment plan) are justifying spending thousands on an innovation (or lack of).
Until recently, none of this was geopolitical. It was a purely business reality—an epidemic that had gone unchecked.
Yet, today, drip innovation in America is occurring as the geopolitical tides change, as the US fights to remain in control of the world.
If America is not leading with innovation, somebody else will. And in some cases that “somebody else” already is, like China, who is the global leader in clean energy or Turkey and Iran who underpin a new era of drone exports, operating in tandem to what the US and Israel offer.
Drip innovation must now be treated as an epidemic that needs to be stopped in its tracks. Left unfixed, it threatens to roll back America’s footprint and fracture the globe along “innovation lines.” Drip innovation is as much geopolitical as it is about business principles.
Innovation Crown
If America does not solve its drip innovation epidemic, the biggest threat is who will hold the global innovation crown.
So far, the world has had no choice but to use American ideas and technologies—including most recently the explosion of large-language models (LLMs). This is a paradox, as other nations sought to build sovereign technology (e.g., Europe, China) that could challenge America. Yet even with generative AI, the US was first. However, there is another way to look at this.
The space separating American innovations is widening. It used to be that America would stun the world constantly:
the iPod came out in 2001
the Roomba vacuum was launched in 2002
the iPhone came out in 2007
the iPad came out in 2010
mRNA vaccines came out in 2020
ChatGPT was launched in 2022
Did you see the gap? Take mRNA vaccines out, as their development was due to an “extraordinary circumstance” (the pandemic), forgoing all the normal ideas and principles of innovation, and since 2010, it is hard to find an original, transformative innovation in the US until 2022.
Meanwhile, consider the slate of Chinese innovations during 2010-2025:
Rapid expansion of high-speed rail connectivity throughout the country
Rapid deployment of 5G telecommunications
New healthcare innovations like “One-Minute Clinics” that can diagnose a variety of conditions and prescribe medicine or further treatment in under 60 seconds
National drive to push electric vehicles—and connected infrastructure—throughout the country (e.g., in 2025, China’s EV sales are set to surpass total vehicle sales in the US).
Complete domination of clean energy production (i.e., clean energy contributed 10% of China’s GDP growth)
And none of this takes into account China’s stunning advancement and deployment with AI and robotics, in particular, the new Chinese AI plan to guide national efforts up to 2035, including making AI the new growth engine for the country’s economy and raising the AI usage rate to 90% by 2030.
See the difference?
All of this changes who is the global innovation leader. It might not be the US anymore. If America does not hold this crown, then somebody else will. So far, the calclulation has been: whoever holds the innovation crown will be considered the global technology power. Yet, in this, a separate question has been missed. What happens to the nation who loses the innovation crown?
That nation will struggle to convince countries to buy from it, to stay connected to it, to keep adopting its ideas. America is not used to this. And this means, innovation fluidity could have a direct effect on Washington’s use of tariffs, sanctions, and geoeconomics to keep nations integrated on an American axis. Very quickly, innovation and geopolitics could fuse together.
Fractured Innovation
Stemming from this, innovation could fracture along geopolitical lines.
If the US is no longer viewed as the innovation champion of the world, largely due to drip innovation and the changing perception of the world, then other nations will step up to the plate. This goes beyond China. There is also the UAE, Israel, Japan and South Korea. And, those nations are in a single “innovation basket” having to do with frontier and advanced technologies. There are other innovation baskets too—like what governments do with commodities.
If drip innovation is not fixed, then America could lose its global innovation status. But, this does not mean it automatically goes to China. The world may be entering a period where there is no global technology or innovation superpower but multiple regional behemoths.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia may dominate the Middle East and North Africa with AI; China may dominate Southeast Asia and Africa with EVs; America could dominate the West and Americas with its ideas.
Some in the US may counter, saying that the foreign innovations are taking place on the back of American technology. For example, Albania’s AI minister was built in cooperation with Microsoft. But, how long will this last? The latest investment by ASML in Mistral on the grounds of “European tech sovereignty” shows that even foreign businesses are rushing to nuture local innovation and ecosystems to replace “external supplies.”
There is a limited timeline for America to supply the world with technology. Very quickly, other nations could step in, providing their own “base” that nations can use. In particular, China’s drive towards chip self-reliance, and new mandates, like that data centers must procure 50% of their chips from local companies, means Beijing could soon offer other economies a chip foundation, completely edging out America.
Once again, drip innovation could correlate with America struggling to call the shots.
Consumer Nationalism
As innovation becomes part of geopolitical thinking in a new way, new dimensions will emerge. One of them is “consumer nationalism.” This is the idea that customers will begin to purchase goods based on their political or national beliefs. But this is not just about American consumers preferring to buy “Made in America” over “Made in China.” It is also about a certain segment of consumers becoming angry at their own companies over lack of innovation.
The world has not witnessed this so far, especially in the West. But consider what would happen if Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) were let into Western markets, where the price of some mid-tier BYD EVs are just US$20,000—loaded with features and even some self-driving capabilities. At this point, three things will happen in quick succession:
Global automakers will see their EV divisions fall apart as Western consumers (the richest in the world) flock to the cheaper Chinese offerings.
Western consumers will begin to “plug into” Chinese business ecosystems in a new way, that supercedes anything so far, including TikTok or Chinese cloud adoption.
A growing number of consumers in the West will begin to view their companies (from Western markets) as backward and uninnovative. At a moment when the nationalist fever is burning, this outlook could turn into frustration: why aren’t Western companies able to match China?
Consumer nationalism has not been viewed this way before. But it is a new emerging reality at a moment when geopolitical volatility spreads, and economies increasingly seek sovereign and locally sourced goods over imports (and reliance). If companies are locked in drip innovation, they risk being called out by their own customers. Except, this will not happen during “normal times.” It will happen when foreign competitors enter economies, and cause the “entrenched leaders” to stumble and shake.
Conclusion
Drip innovation is a reality that cannot be ignored. It is present in the US and across the West. The blame is not just on companies but also the established expectations of customers and markets. Every year, there is suppose to be a gigantic “refresh” that WOWs everybody. Perhaps, certain products have reached the end of their runway in what can be innovated, in what “newness” can be unlocked. But innovation was never about one product. It was about how an organization looks at a spectrum of products and services.
If that outlook is relegated to “drip” and “narrow views,” then the products will reflect that—existing and new. When it comes to the US and China, the Chinese are not engaged in drip innovation. They are in the exact opposite boat, focused on unleashing innovation on their nation and the globe.
As the US enters a battle to keep control of the world, eclipsing the Cold War and even World War II, innovation has been on the periphery, something that was either an afterthought or taken for granted. But ultimately, it may fall on American enterprises and their return to innovation that defines America’s reach, and in the process, how America can check its adversaries.
It could be innovation that defines the future balance of power in the world—meaning the real fight is not over missile-shields, military bases, shipping lanes, or trade tariffs, but the machines, models, and technological modes that are adopted and deployed because of what they can do, not just where they come from.
-ABISHUR PRAKASH AKA. MR. GEOPOLITICS
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