First off, the way we make progress in anything we do is by being honest with the world presents to us, and then figuring out how to interpret it properly.  So you have to have some sort of metric – like a statistic – to gauge things by.

For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, weighing yourself every morning and keeping track of this metric is, well,  usually pretty good (if not obvious)…  Of course, your weight is highly correlated with how many net calories you take in every day, so there’s another quality metric that you could keep track of…

So, when it comes to the health of companies and how they are thinking about the future, inventor James Dyson (Founder of Dyson Inc., and creator of those funky looking, but quite powerful vacuum cleaners you’ve seen on TV…) says this about what he looks for:

“I watch patent filings.  Patent applications are a barometer of how much money companies are spending on R&D and how they are positioning themselves for the future.  For the first six months of this year, the number of U.S. applications was down 14%.  But China’s applications are up 19%.”

To draw the conclusion that China is investing in the future far more than the United States, you have to make sure there isn’t something else causing this disparity.  But assuming that this is correct, it doesn’t seem to bode well for how the U.S. is positioning itself relative to other countries at the moment…