HBR's 10 Breakthrough Ideas for 2010: Finance

#3. Finance: What the Financial Sector Should Borrow: A military approach to keeping the economy safe (by Lawrence Candell). In the world of national defense, to stay ahead of emerging threats, the federal government invests in federally funded organizations (Federally Funded Research and Development—FFRD’s) like Mitretech, Mitlabs, and others. The author, who works at MIT labs in Lincoln, Mass., suggests the same approach for another important national security area: Finance.

The Breakthrough Idea: To prevent another financial meltdown like 2008, the author suggests: “Let’s federally fund an R&D center that, borrowing from the best practices of defense research centers, could design, analyze, prototype and troubleshoot financial innovations, making sure they promoted our [collective] economic security and prosperity.” Pretty good idea I’d say!