In a capitalist society the need to innovate and create new is driven by the need to get ahead of others. Where does the sense of urgency come from in a socialist society?

no-corners-deactivated20160918:

Honestly, the idea that we need capitalism to innovate is misguided.

In reality, public-sector companies innovate all the time. From military hardware, all the way through the high-technology used in space exploration by NASA and the like. The internet, for example, by which you’re reading this message, was invented by means of public funding.

Competition could be created between groups of scientists and engineers to create technology and the group that wins would get an extra stipend from the government.

Here’s an article that I think you might find super informative on the subject, including some working models.

I’d like to add that this famous “capitalist innovation” innovates in a very specific way —to increase profits. It can help people as a by-product, but that is not the goal. Is designing a product to fail at the exact appropriate time to maximize repeat purchases a good “innovation”? Is learning how to skirt around environmental laws and still damage the environment by shipping waste to third world countries or dumping it in international waters good innovation? Is finding a perfect balance between forcing a worker to do as much work as possible, have as little power as possible, and get as little reward as possible good innovation? Is figuring out how to deny a vast portion of the country healthcare, housing, any kind of help while swelling up the wealth of a privileged few —without causing rebellion — is this good innovation? Is designing a car or other item so that the owner can’t repair it themselves and has to take it in to get special service from your company, is this good innovation? Is making shoddier products that people have to buy good innovation? What about driving other small companies out of business and eliminating variety, are we happy about all the innovation taking place in that field?

You say that capitalism’s competition is the greatest spur towards innovation to stay competitive, but I think you’re looking at the often idealized capitalism that people think of that is somehow separate and unaffected and unaffecting of the government.

In fact capitalism is synonymous with the government (all these emails I get from politicians are asking for donations, not my vote), and that government has implemented Intellectual Property, which is the supposedly limited monopoly on bringing to market products based on research patented and copyrighted. This stifles innovation as whole avenues of technological development are cut off from most of the relevant industry, which must then create wasteful costly incompatible rival tech (VHS vs BETA, DVD-HD vs Blueray). Regulatory capture can also ensure that regulations that should be created in the public interest are instead preferential to vested interests in current tech, stifling new products and new innovations (DRM, DMCA, electric cars, green energy). Instead the industry should be working together to continually create the best possible designs based on advancing tech.

Futhermore, closed tech and trade secrets are a byword of capitalist companies, along with NDAs, noncompete clauses, and the like. All of these are anti-innovation, stifling the cooperation of like-minded researchers and developers, all rational and reasonable actions to take in capitalism. How would sweeping that aside and asking every industry to work together to create the best possible products not improve on today’s secretive fractured and wastefully redundant R&D process.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. There are plenty of areas where your capitalist innovation is something I think we’d be far better off without. Socialism merely channels the innovation where it should go: directly to bettering the lives of all humans. I’m convinced that socialism will allow us the means by which we can implement a free, open source system in all sectors of the economy.