A: You get the government agency that created the blue print for the Internet, sponsored the inventor of the computer mouse, and helped send man to the moon via the Saturn rocket program.
The Washington Post ran an article in their April 7, 2008 online edition highlighting the fiftieth birthday of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA was formed by President Eisenhower in 1958 as a response to the Soviet’s Sputnik launch and as a way to fast track applied research. It’s a unique agency in a world of government bureaucracy – it has only two layers of management and half of its employees are program managers or office directors who are on 4-6 year assignments.
“DARPA will take a chance on an idea with no data. We’ll put up the money to go get the data and see if the idea holds,” said Anthony J. Tether, agency director.
The agency is currently working on two-way speech translation systems which allow a soldier to communicate with and understand anyone they encounter anywhere in the world. They’re also creating a prosthetic limb prototype that uses the brain to control the limb and help soldiers remain in the military without having to be discharged.
So what can we as product managers learn from DARPA?
- Even in heavily bureaucratic organizations, innovation can thrive. If it can survive in the Mother of All Bureaucracies, it can flourish in yours. Don’t give up.
- Innovation is best done with flat organization structures that enable fast, go / no-go decisions. You’ve got to get the bad ideas out of the way as early as possible.
- Innovation is a mix of art and science and is typically not linear. Sometimes you have to go get data to support an idea, rather than having an idea come as a conclusion from lots of data.
Innovation is about big ideas that change the way we do things. DARPA is a great example of big ideas that change the world. Happy 50th DARPA.
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