Now that Steve Jobs is gone what's left in terms of American inovation?
Where is the next Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), James Watt (1736-1819), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Eli Whitney (1765-1825), Samuel Morse (1791-1872), Charles Goodyear (1800-1860), Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884), Isaac Singer (1811-1875), George Westinghouse (1846-1914), Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), Thomas Edison (1847-1931), George Eastman (1854-1932), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Henry Ford (1863-1947), Wright Brothers (1867-1948), David Sarnoff (1891-1971), Robert Jarvik (1946-), Steve Jobs (1955-2011) and Steve Wozniak.
There are many more, less known, innovators in micro electronics and computer science including, Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) (computer languages), John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley (1910-1989) (Transistor), David Packard (1912-1996) (co-founder Hewlett-Packard), Douglas Engelbart (1925-) (mouse), Robert Noyce (1927-1990) (Semiconductor ICs - co-founded Fairchild), Gordon Moore (1929-) (microprocessor - co-founded Intel), Ken Thompson (1943-) and Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011)(UNIX®), Bill Gates (1955-) (The Basic interpreter for the Apple II was the last technically innovative thing he did, he was an expert at copying/acquiring/bundling and selling software)

If Mark Zuckerberg (1984- )(Facebook) is an example of our future, we're in big trouble.

At least we still have Intel and Motorola (Their phone business is up for sale in 2011) for design if not manufacturing and Google [Larry Page & Sergey Brin (1973 -- )].
And as of 2011 the USA is still the largest economy in the world.

However, most large companies even the pharmaceuticals, are cutting way back on research and development (R&D) in pursuit of short term profits. Will countries which are able to to take long term views of growth surpass us in economic growth?

Links:
Failure - Persistence - Success
Evolution of the Economy | IIP Digital at usembassy.gov
Industrial Revolution
Significant Industrial Revolution Inventors
National Medal of Technology and Innovation - Wikipedia
Steve Jobs' Legacy In the Pantheon of Great American Innovators
The future of parking Budapest
DealTalk: Sizing up who might buy Motorola's phone business | Reuters
History of Personal Computers

Books: