Books | bonvillianwebsite

Books:

Science and technology policy is a growing field of study both worldwide and the in the U.S. and is increasingly understood as at the core of economic growth, technological innovation and societal well-being. This book explores the evolution of these policies and the central organizing principles behind them, including the ways American innovation organization has taken shape, the dynamics of its innovations system, and the new directions taken in recent years toward industrial innovation policies.

This book focuses on problems in the current US workforce education system and in our accompanying labor market information system, the role community colleges, universities, industry and government could play in workforce education, new education technologies that could help us meet the scale required for workforce solutions, new apprenticeship programs, and a range of new models and policies that could help in delivering workforce content.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has played a remarkable role in the creation new transformative technologies, revolutionizing defense with drones and precision-guided munitions, and transforming civilian life with portable GPS receivers, voice-recognition software, self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and, most famously, the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet.
This book collects the leading academic research on DARPA from a wide range of perspectives, combining to chart an important story from the Agency’s founding in the wake of Sputnik, to the current attempts to adapt it to use by other federal agencies.

MIT Press - 2018 (with Peter L. Singer)

In 2016 the political system experienced significant disruption in part due to an angry voting block suffering from a long decline in American manufacturing, which became particularly acute in the decade of the 2000s.
The book reviews the origins of the policy response to this dilemma, which came to be called “advanced manufacturing.”
It traces the foundational concepts, explores how, for the first time, an innovation system response was considered and developed to strengthen the U.S. production system, examines the key new policy mechanism, the manufacturing innovation institutes, and supporting workforce education efforts.

Technological Innovation in Legacy Sectors Oxford Univ. Press 2015 (with Charles Weiss)

Creates a new, unified, systematic approach to innovation policy, focused on overcoming two deep problems in the U.S. innovation system: expanding economic growth and raising the rate of creation of well-paying jobs.
Introduces, defines and develops the new concept of disruption-resistant "Legacy sectors" and sets forth a conceptual framework with which to address this neglected problem.
Adds to previous models of the dynamics of innovation, identifies three new drivers, and sets the stage for its recommendations on how to introduce innovation into Legacy sectors.

Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution

MIT Press 2009 (with Charles Weiss)

America is addicted to fossil fuels, and the environmental and geopolitical costs are mounting. A public-private program-- at an expanded scale-- to stimulate innovation in energy policy seems essential. In Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution, Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian make the case for just such a program.
Their proposal backs measures to stimulate private investment in new technology, within a revamped energy innovation system. It would encourage a broad range of innovations that would give policymakers a variety of technological options over the long implementation period and at the huge scale required, faster than could be accomplished by market forces alone. Even if the nation can't make progress at this time on pricing carbon, a technology strategy remains critical and can go ahead now.
Strong leadership and public support will be needed to resist the pressure of entrenched interests against putting new technology pathways into practice in the complex and established energy sector. This book has helped start the process.