In his groundbreaking book, The World is Flat, Tom Friedman uses an African proverb to describe the challenge confronting America in the 21st century:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up.

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.

When the sun comes up, you better start running.

The fundamental question posed in Friedman’s book is really what will help America successfully run in a highly competitive, but increasingly connected, global economy?

His answer: innovation.

I think that’s another word for the kind of research being conducted in major American universities. Research being conducted at American universities, like the University of Kentucky, is our country’s edge. It’s what differentiates us from the rest of the world.

The 20th century was an American century, in large measure, because of calculated risks and decisions we made as a country. After WWII, through the G.I. Bill we made a college education — and greater skills — accessible to a whole generation of Americans. We also created organizations like the National Science Foundation that made research and innovation a priority.

That paved the way for the entrepreneurial economy that America practically invented.

The other key is focusing on research that will make a difference in lives of people and communities. UK President Lee T. Todd, Jr., who retires at the end of the month after 10 years, has been a prophet about making research real to the people of Kentucky.

His philosophy about research that matters is discussed here — http://uknow.uky.edu/content/making-research-real-kentucky-lee-todd-gets... – the fourth in a five-part series of stories we’ve been doing about important priorities in President Todd’s tenure.

His point, consistently and eloquently stated for 10 years, has been seeking Top 20 status simply for rankings and numbers doesn’t matter. If we don’t do research that materially improves our state, we will have failed Kentucky. That’s why he’s placed such an emphasis on research that seeks to address those seemingly intractable Kentucky challenges: health care issues like cancer and heart disease and economic development advances that help create an entrepreneurial economy where kids in our Commonwealth won’t just graduate to get jobs. They will graduate so that they might create jobs.

Lee Todd understands that research is the thing that separates us. It makes us different.

Our commitment to that will determine whether this century is an American one as well.