Finland Bureaucracy Is Innovative?

Robert Kaiser has another interesting article on Finland in today's Post. (Caution: he makes 2 math errors in one paragraph; I've written the editor.) He claims the country is united in pushing innovation, trusting the government to guide R&D, and devotes more GDP to R&D than the US:

"'We are helping to plan R&D projects that we will then fund,' he said. About a third of the projects Tekes funds fail completely, Saarnivaara said. He would like that percentage to be higher -- in other words, he would like to take more risks."

I'm amazed by the statement--I can't imagine any US government agency boasting that 1/3 of its money is wasted (at least, that's how the politicians of the out party would phrase and the media would be hot on their tails). If I'm right that you almost never do things right the first time (witness Chertoff's reorg of Homeland Security), the ability to learn from your failures is critical. That assumes you're free to fail, which most US agencies aren't.

It's possible though that Kaiser and I are over-enthusiastic. Both DARPA and NSF probably have a bunch of failures that are mostly hidden. And the history of government steering development isn't always good. I remember in the early 90's Japan was pushing the "5th generation computers". A blind alley, I believe. But with all the cautions, I'm still envious of a society that seems to trust its government that much.