Innovation happens when government gets out of the way.

Question: Should the government do more to encourage innovation?

Jimmy Wales: I think a lot of innovation just happens when you get the government out of the way.  Alot of times when people talk about encouraging innovation, what they end up thinking about way too much is some massive public subsidies for some new chip manufacturing something-something. And it’s usually a complete and total fiasco because you get the wrong types of people coming in, the wrong types of politically-connected businesses doing things that make no sense because they’re being subsidized to do it.  I think it’s really important to recognize that it’s very, very difficult for the government to encourage innovation. The most important thing you could do is just get out of our way.

Recorded On: Aug 10, 2007