TechCrunch is launching CrunchGov, which offers a Congressional leaderboard on tech friendly legislators. But what about the race for the White House – should Silicon Valley be supporting Obama or Romney? There are few people who know their way around Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. better than best-selling author and columnist Larry Downes. And, as Downes told me via Skype today, he doesn’t expect either a Romney or Obama administration to be radically different in terms of how they address technology issues. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Downes explained, since the very best thing that D.C. could do for Silicon Valley is leave it alone. But there are four issues that Downes thinks the next administration does need to address: immigration policy, the spectrum crunch, taxation on overseas corporation earnings and patent reform. Most of all, he told me, whoever the next U.S. President is needs to focus on spectrum reform. “We are going to hit a wall without freeing up spectrum,” Downes explains. No spectrum, no innovation, he says. Are you listening, CrunchGov?
Larry Downes is a consultant and speaker on developing business strategies in an age of constant disruption caused by information technology. Downes is author of the Business Week and New York Times business bestseller, “Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance†(Harvard Business School Press, 1998), which has sold nearly 200,000 copies and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five most important books ever published on business and technology. His new book, “The Laws...
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