Make 2026 about more than fireworks

With another July Fourth upon us, here’s a startling thought: In 10 years the nation will be celebrating its 250th birthday.

I remember the 200th birthday in 1976. About all we had to show for it was a series of spectacular fireworks displays around the country.

One forward-looking professor at George Mason University outside Washington, D.C., Philip Auerswald, has a much bolder, and more permanent, way of marking the nation’s 250th: Construct a new, highly interactive museum of entrepreneurship and innovation right off the National Mall. Auerswald is one of the nation’s leading innovation experts, author of several books, and co-founder of an academic journal appropriately titled Innovations.

He’s put together an impressive group of advisers from around the country, including Vint Cerf of Alphabet, entrepreneur Donna Harris and inventor Dean Kamen. Auerswald has also identified soon-to-be-vacant space for the potential location of the museum: the site where the departments of Energy and Transportation are now located on Independence Avenue. (Both will be relocated to yet-to-be-determined places in the city.)

Once you see the four-minute video discussion of the idea at the website 2026.us, you’ll get an answer to the obvious question: Why? Because America not only stands for freedom and democracy, but for its unmatched record of entrepreneurship and innovation. America’s 250th birthday provides a long-overdue opportunity not only to recognize that fact and the many people in our history who have made it a reality. The museum would be a permanent reminder that we need policies and people committed to constantly renewing and reinventing our country.

These ideas couldn’t come at a better time. Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon has shown in “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” that at least by one widely used measure, the pace of innovation has been falling in this country for more than five decades. Likewise, the startup share of all companies has been dropping for more than three decades.

Cynics may ask: Why should we celebrate the lives of innovators who belong in that museum who got rich and famous? Yale economist William Nordhaus supplies an answer: Innovators reap just 4 percent of the gains from their inventions; the other 96 percent accrues to society as a whole, in the form of better and cheaper goods and services.

The National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation that Auerswald helped found, with the help of some initial donors, is soliciting ideas on the website not just for the museum but how to celebrate its themes on an ongoing basis. I hope the country doesn’t miss this unique opportunity to remind future generations of how, and why, they will have come to enjoy the lives they will lead.

This story was originally published July 1, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Make 2026 about more than fireworks."