The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America's Future, + Website

CHAPTER 15

The Pace of Ark Building Quickens

When everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

—HENRY FORD

This chapter covers only the first three years of the 2010–2019 decade, but the projected pace of innovative solutions created by businesses and non-profits is already 50 percent greater than in the 2000–2009 decade. The seriousness of the skills gap is becoming apparent to more business and technology executives, and the solutions are becoming ever more creative.

2010: The Broadcom MASTERS

As I was writing this book, I would occasionally head to our cottage on Cape Cod for several days of thinking and writing. It was during one of those trips, when I was gathering information on why middle school students perceive math and science to be hard subjects, that I came across a Huffington Post article written by Paula Golden. She is the executive director of the Broadcom Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Broadcom Corporation, a Fortune 500 semiconductor corporation focused on the wired and wireless markets. And she is a very enthusiastic STEM advocate!

Golden made a strong case in her column that if our education system made math and science applicable to the lives of young students, then math and science wouldn’t be perceived to be so hard. Several weeks earlier I had met Ken Venner, the former CIO of Broadcom, so I wrote him a note asking for an e-mail introduction to Paula Golden, and the following week Paula ...