21st Century Innovation Systems for Japan and the United States Lessons from a Decade of Change: Report of a Symposium (2009) / Chapter Skim
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The Connected Science Model for Innovation - The DARPA Role--William B. Bonvillian
The Connected Science Model for Innovation - The DARPA Role--William B. Bonvillian
Pages 206-237
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innovation system in the second half of the 20th century was profoundly tied to U.S. World War II and Cold War defense science and technology investment.3 However, this late 20th century military technology evolution was only part of a much bigger picture of innovation transformation.
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. An Eisenhower creation, DARPA was the primary inheritor of the WWII connected science model embodied in Los Alamos and MIT's Rad Lab.
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To briefly summarize three plus decades of work in growth economics, Pro fessor of Economics Robert Solow of MIT won the Nobel Prize in 1987 because he was profoundly dissatisfied with the growth model of classical economics, where growth was understood in a static model of the interaction between capital supply and labor supply. Solow posited a dynamic model, arguing that while capital and labor supply remained significant, there was a much bigger factor.
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In other words, growth economics is gradually broadening economics' explanatory depth and toolset to reach and understand complex systems, and the third innovation factor discussed below, innovation organization, arguably pushes it further in that direction. See, generally, M
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wartime R&D, creating crash research projects in critical areas, such as the Rad Lab at MIT and Los Alamos, and the and, in turn, insured interaction and coordination with a rich mix of research components. Influenced by the frustra tions of his WWI military research experience where technology breakthrough could not transition past bureaucratic barriers into defense products, Bush kept civilian science control of critical elements of defense research, insisting that his science teams stay out of uniform and separate from military bureaucratic hierarchies which he found unsuited to the close-knit interaction needed for technology progress.
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Because he assembled a connected science model during WWII, Bush no doubt realized the deep connection problems in inherent this pipeline model, but likely felt that salvaging federal basic research investment was the best he could achieve in a period of anticipated peace. He did argue that this basic research approach should be organized and coordinated under "one tent" to direct all the nation's research portfolios, proposing what would become the National Science Foundation (NSF)
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16The term "dismantled" is used to indicate that the structure for science management in WWII was ended, and many wartime science entities were shut down, including MIT's Rad Lab. Obviously, other existing science entities continued in operation, such as NACA, which Bush chaired before the war, and was an early example of a connected, challenge model approach.
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19Despite the emergence over two decades ago of growth economics and its doctrine that growth is predominantly innovation based, the two U.S. political parties are still largely organized around the old factors posited by classical economics as responsible for growth, capital supply and labor supply.
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experienced at the institutional level during WWII with a connected science model built around technological challenges, formed under one organizational tent. The U.S., following the war, shifted to a highly-decentralized model, scattering government-funded research among a series of mission agencies.
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Innovation requires not only a process of creating connected science at the institutional leel, it also must operate at the personal leel. People are innovators, not simply the overall institutions where talent and R&D come together.
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Loomis and Bush purposely kept it out of the military. The Rad Lab used a talent base with a mix of science disciplines and technology skills, it was highly collaborative, it was organized around the challenge model, and it used connected science, moving from fundamental breakthrough to development, prototyping and initial production.
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Bell Labs' Murray Hill facility was consciously set in the New Jersey countryside after Edison's Menlo Park model and also drew from the great military labs of WWII, the Rad Lab and Los Alamos. AT&T's R&D Vice President, Mervin Kelly and his lead researcher, William Shockley, wanted a solid state physics team of fifty scientists and technicians from various fields with capability for fundamental research leading to practical applications.
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A venture capitalist has commented that he looks for these same kinds of characteristics every time he funds a startup. To summarize, a common rule set seems to characterize successful innovation at the personal and face-to-face level; the rules include ensuring: a highly-collaborative team or group of great talent; a non-hierarchical, flat and democratic structure where all can contribute; a cross-disciplinary talent mix, including experimental and theoretical skills sets networked to the best thinking in relevant areas; organization around a challenge model; using a con nected science model able to move breakthroughs across fundamental, applied, development and prototype stages; cooperative, collaborative leaders able to 29Ibid.
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Created in 1958 by Eisenhower as a unifying force for defense R&D in light of the stove-piped mili tary services' space programs that had helped lead to America's Sputnik failure, DARPA became a unique entity. In many ways, DARPA directly inherited the connected science, challenge and great group organization models of the Rad Lab and Los Alamos set up by Bush, Loomis and Oppenheimer.
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At the institutional organization level, DARPA and Licklider became a collaborative force among the Defense Department's research agencies controlled by the services, using DARPA IT investments to leverage participation by the agencies to solve common problems under connected science and challenge models. DARPA and Licklider also kept their own research bureaucracy to a bare bones minimum, using the service R&D agencies to carry out project management and administra tive tasks, so that DARPA's efforts created co-ownership with the service R&D stovepipes.
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Van Atta, et al., DARPA Technical Accomplishments, Volumes I-V, Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis, 1991. See also Richard Van Atta, "Fifty Years of Innovation and Dis covery", in DARPA: 0 Years of Bridging the Gap, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, April 2008, pp.
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economy in the 1990s, creating strong productivity gains and new business models that led to new societal wealth creation42 which, in turn, provided the funding base for the defense transformation. To summarize, the DARPA model can support traditional technology development within the defense sector where that technology is primarily or overwhelmingly defense-relevant (like stealth)
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See Richard Van Atta, Institute for Defense Analysis, "Energy and Climate Change Research and the DARPA Model," Presentation to the Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, November 3, 2004, p.
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• Project-based assignments, organized around a challenge model: DARPA organizes a significant part of its portfolio around specific technology challenges. It works "right-to-left" in the R&D pipeline, foreseeing new innovation-based capabilities and then working back to the fundamental breakthroughs that take them there.
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Stealth, stand-off precision weapons, and night vision were projects contracted to major defense contractors. Lockheed's Skunk Works has long worked with DARPA as well as the Air Force, and represents a radical innovation model operated within a more standard defense firm.
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12; President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, Report to the President, "Cybersecurity: A Crisis of Prioritization," February 2005; Defense Science Board, High Performance Microchip Supply, February 2005, pp.
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DSB expressed concern that this fundamental DARPA approach was breaking down as it cut back its 6.2 university computer science investments, and shifted more of its portfolio to classified "black" research, under pressure from the ongoing war, which can not include most universities and non-defense tech firms, and, so DSB suggested, reduces DARPA's intellectual mindshare on critical technology issues.52 50Thomas Howell, "Competing Programs: Government Support for Microelectronics," in National Research Council, Securing the Future: Regional and National Programs to Support the Semiconductor Industry, Charles W Wessner, ed., Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2003; Thomas Howell, et al., China's Emerging Semiconductor Industry, Semiconductor Industry Association, October 2003.
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Tom Leighton to Questions from the House Science Committee, July 7, 2005, op.
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Nonetheless, following the Cold War, technology transition declined. Unsuccessful in building a new consensus with the military services for transferring the results of revolutionary technology investment into service procurement, DARPA technology strategy has been moving from its his 55Dr.
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. DARPA's need to focus on the current asymmetric conflict and corresponding classified work, as well as shorter term technology transition, may make it less able to spin off technology to the civil ian economy, despite DoD's growing capital plant cost crisis and its need to take better advantage of advances in that sector.57 Given DARPA's historic role in successfully straddling both sectors, DARPA's needs to protect its ability to play in both worlds.
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59House Science Committee Committee Hearing on the Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S. (Testimony of William Wulf and Thomas Leighton)
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Van Atta, et al., DARPA Technical Accomplishments, Volumes I-V, op.
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See also John Young, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Info Memo for Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates, DoD Science and Technology Program, August 24, 2007 (need and corresponding proposal for increased DoD S&T funding, listing potential high pay-off research areas)
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Building on the Rad Lab example, it built a deeply collaborative, flat, close-knit, talented, participatory, flexible system, oriented to breakthrough radical innovation. It has used a challenge model for R&D, moving from funda mental, back and forth with applied, creating connected science linking research, development, and prototyping, with access to initial production.
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1999. The Oxford Companion to American Military History.
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Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis. Van Atta, Richard, et al.
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Gates. DoD Science and Tech nology Program.
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