US Maintaining the Lead in High-Tech Innovation?

This post on HBR seems to indicate that the consensus view of the declining lead of the US to be on the cutting edge of high tech innovations and product development may be premature.  As the author outlines:

Between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. maintained about a 40% global share in knowledge-intensive services and about a 35% global share in high-tech industries, keeping the lead in four of them. Indeed, despite the high value of the dollar and the rapid growth of emerging markets between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. increased its global share in all but the aerospace industry. The U.S. share in communications equipment increased by more than 20 percentage points as Japan's share plummeted, and the U.S. doubled its share in computers and office equipment, although it was overtaken by China in 2003. These are the two sectors that encompass most of the products and companies that are the focus of the Pisano and Shih analysis.

The increase in China's share in computers and office machinery — from 2% in 1995 to 46% in 2005 — was remarkable, but it is not a sign that China has gained on the U.S. in innovative capacity in this sector or others. China's exports of high-tech products turn out to be not very high tech and not very Chinese: 80%-90% of China's high-tech exports come from firms that are partially or wholly foreign-owned — in many cases by American or Japanese companies — and 95% are processing exports, the high-tech components of which are produced elsewhere and imported into China. China accounts for about 35% of the value added in its exports — and considerably less in many of its high-tech exports sold under the brand names of U.S. high-tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, and HP.

While it may be the case that the US still leads in many of the innovations of high tech R&D and product development, I don't see how it can maintain this lead forever.  At some point these Asian countries will start to compete in not just low cost manufacturing and labor, but in high end R&D and cutting edge product development and even innovative new business processes and management techniques, another area where the US still seems to lead.

I think this is where the US will need to undergo an extensive process of "creative destruction" as advocated by Joseph Schumpeter.  It will not be pretty, nor will it be easy, but necessary if the US is to maintain the lead in high tech innovation.