Below are quotes from notable figures about the importance of innovation to America's competitiveness.

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -Benjamin Franklin

"Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time." -Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."- Alan Kay, Computer scientist

"The key to our success- as it always has been- will be to compete by developing new products, generating new industries, by maintaining our role as the world's engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation.  It's absolutely essential to our future." -President Barack Obama

"If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us." -Andy Grove, Intel cofounder

"For CEOs today, it's all about acheieving growth and efficiency through innovation.  It's not about product innovation so much anymore as about innovating business models. process, culture and management." -Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO

"Build it here.  Sell it everywhere." -John E. Bryson, Commerce Secretary

"There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance.  Miss that moment- and you start to decline." -Andy Grove, Intel cofounder

"Innovation is everything.  When you're on the forefront, you can see what the next innovation needs to be." -Robert Noyce, Intel cofounder

"Encouraging early-stage investment in fast-growing entrepreneurial start-up businesses is one of the best ways to create new jobs." -Mark Warner, U.S. Senator (Virginia)

"The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do.  It lets people be creative.  It lets people be productive.  It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential." -Steve Ballmer, Microsft CEO