Continuous Improvement of NASA's Innovation Ecosystem Proceedings of a Workshop (2019) / Chapter Skim
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2 Setting the Stage
2 Setting the Stage
Pages 4-12
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From page 4... ...
This was followed by a talk from Douglas Terrier, NASA's chief technology officer, who provided some historical context and explained the challenges facing NASA today in its quest to remain at the forefront of innovation. INNOVATION AT NASA NASA's success depends on its ability to continuously innovate, Saunders said, and she offered the International Space Station (ISS)
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One aim is to understand how NASA can stay in a leadership role as human and robotic exploration move further into space. The second is to determine how to maintain that leadership role in a way that "enables fertile conditions for commercial success and academic success behind it." A History of Successful Innovation Successful innovation requires a constant stream of new technologies, and NASA's innovators delivered.
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"I don't think we've had this many simultaneous activities going on at one time," he said, listing such things as the InSight Mars lander, the Parker solar probe, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be coming online in 2019. Finally, concerning NASA's aviation activities, he said that it is the first time in the 15 years that he has worked at NASA that there are three named X planes being developed at the same time: the X-56, X-57, and X-59.
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From page 7... ...
"This is a big difference," he said, "and how to adapt our systems to incorporate these rapidly changing innovations is really a challenge." A closely related issue is that the speed of adoption of new technologies is accelerating. "It is not just that people are coming up with great ideas," he said, "but they're finding their way into the market even more rapidly." He illustrated this point with a graph showing the shortening time between the introduction of a technology and when that technology reaches 50 percent penetration (Figure 2.2)
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That's a big deal." In addition to the changes in the innovation environment that Terrier spoke about, participants heard throughout the meeting that NASA and other innovators are also facing major changes in how organizations interact with one another. In particular, as Geoffrey Parker explained in his keynote address on the workshop's second day, a number of businesses are focusing on providing platforms for other businesses to interact on, creating vast opportunities for new efficiencies and capabilities (see Box 2.1)
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"Part of the architectural challenge is to have enough control points in the architecture that you can throw out the bad actors," he said. "So there's a fair bit of design in order to promote "kind of positive" growth, and you end up in this kind of landlord sheriff town, almost like running a little mini-economy, in order to promote growth." Returning to the Walmart example, Parker said that the key step in the company's transformation into a platform organization was that it took the various services that it had developed for its own use and made them available to others through application programming interfaces, or APIs.
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From page 10... ...
There have also been a large number of grassroots efforts at various NASA locations to deal with various b arriers to innovation. "We looked across what was already in place," Terrier said, "and saw that there were, perhaps, 147 initiatives -- we probably didn't capture all of them -- that were already in place." Those initiatives were organized in a matrix, with the columns corresponding to the seven categories of barriers and the rows corresponding to various strategies, such as allowing, recognizing, and rewarding innovation; streamlining processes; engaging the public; and creating and operating innovation labs and creative spaces (Figure 2.3)
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Account Forum CoECI Research Grant Programs/Tools NIAC, CIF, ECI HEOMD ScAN PPPs, SAAs, NASA@work challenge.gov OCT Process "2040" STMD OCOMM Human Health Innovation Federal NSSC STMD streamlining Risk Framework Network OCT Portal OSMA IV&V CoECI MSD Partnerships Architecture CoECI NASA Regional NASA Open STMD BIG NASA Centennial Prizes and Economic Innovation, Idea, OCE SOLVE ARMD Student Engage the public Challenges, Challenges, NASA Development; Dual NASA Regional Technical Prizes and Challenge NARI HH&P Innovation Use Technology Economic Fellows Challenges Award at RiceU Development Program Development Open Innovation Day Advanced Office of GSFC Science NASA@work NASA@work communication CoECI Systems Education Office of Education Engineering Innovation Portal Innovation Portal (knowledge-share) Innovation Portal Concepts Digital Digital Learning Collaboration Innovation Seminars Innovation and stovepipe Innovation (MSFC)
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"What" NASA NASA OHC Culture NIAC SAAs NARI Tournament Lab @work Strategy Innovation CIF PPPs Centennial CoECI LaRC Fast Track STMD BIG Initiatives Challenge to Market Ideas Early Career Innovation Human Health Innovational Flight OCE Tech "How" Initiative Awards Risk Portal Opportunities Fellows Innovation Plans "When" 4 FIGURE 2.4 NASA innovation framework. SOURCE: Douglas Terrier, NASA, "The Innovation Challenge," presentation to the Workshop on the Continuous Improvement of NASA's Innovation Ecosystem, November 29, 2018.
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