There is a powerful movement underway to reindustrialize America, a recognition that our nation’s economic strength and military security are built in its factories. For our country to compete, we must be able to make things– and make them quickly. Yet, a fundamental input to our entire economy—the process of construction—has become a significant drag on prosperity, imposing a hidden tax of complexity, uncertainty, and foreign dependence on our national ambition.

I have spent my career focused on the challenge of reindustrialization. In the mid-90s, I was part of MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations program, which trained technical leaders to become manufacturing leaders. I then played a senior operating role in several manufacturing turnarounds and scale-ups, eventually leading companies as CEO. More recently, I had the privilege of leading CleanFiber as we became the fastest-growing manufacturer in America in 2024. My conviction, born from these experiences, is that the construction industry has long been forced to falsely choose between speed, quality, and cost. Advanced materials offer a way to break this compromise. They can catalyze new construction methods that deliver higher quality and faster project timelines, while achieving cost-parity with traditional materials like steel.

At InventWood, our brilliant inventors started with a simple question: what if wood, one of our oldest and most beloved natural building materials, could be fundamentally reinvented for the 21st century? The result of that inquiry is SUPERWOOD. Through a proprietary, multi-stage process, we treat natural wood at the molecular level to create a material that retains the character of wood but achieves a strength comparable to steel, at a fraction of the weight and ultimately at lower cost.

Building with steel has long meant wrestling with complexity—long lead times, volatile pricing, and a fragile global supply chain reliant on foreign powers. SUPERWOOD, which is six times lighter and made in America from American trees, not only frees us from foreign dependence, it changes the entire construction equation. It enables faster, more predictable project schedules with simpler logistics and fewer dependencies. For the construction industry, this is more than an incremental improvement; it is a powerful new competitive advantage, particularly in steel-dependent commercial, residential, and industrial applications, including multifamily housing and data centers.

This shift from managing complexity to leveraging simplicity is profound. It gives builders and developers what they value most: greater control over their timelines and outcomes. This is the essence of a competitive market: innovation that delivers not just cost-competitiveness, but greater predictability and reduced risk via a superior product.

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The benefits ripple outward from the construction site. By creating a high-value, domestically produced material, we strengthen America’s manufacturing base and build more resilient, self-reliant supply chains. We help revitalize forestry communities, turning them into hubs of a modern, sustainable industry. We strengthen America’s military-industrial base, and we do so with a lighter touch on the earth, bringing the beauty of nature into our built environment while improving performance.

For this future to be fully realized, however, history suggests that ingenuity in the lab must be met with wisdom in our regulatory bodies. The most effective role for policy is not to pick winners, but to clear the path for them. By embracing performance-based standards—which certify a material based on what it can do rather than what it is made of—we can foster a culture of competition and allow the best ideas to rise on their merits.

This is how America wins – through innovation in manufacturing, materials, and construction. SUPERWOOD can deliver not only a more efficient, economically competitive solution, but also healthier buildings that connect us to the natural world. The breakthrough creates the opportunity for stronger communities and a more secure nation supported by domestic manufacturing, and for the enduring satisfaction of creating a better future with our own, beautiful domestic resources. This is the promise of the new American manufacturing renaissance: not just a more competitive economy, but a more resilient one.

Jonathan Strimling is the President of InventWood.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.