Crowd sourcing sounds like “crowd-powered”

by YankeeJim | October 4, 2010 at 07:18 am

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Here is an article from Defense Systems that says in one year Peter Lee introduced revolutionary change at the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA). When I first read the headline, I was skeptical. How could one person in a short time make any lasting contribution to the Department of Defense? I usually rant about the high turnover in DOD executive positions that undermines accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness.

R & D is an environment where you want change and improvement, fast and continuously. Maybe Peter Lee was onto something when he introduced the notion of “crowd sourcing.”

I participated in one of these activities whereby a portal was established by the President’s Office of Science, Technology, and Innovation and called for ideas about improving Manufacturing America, for instance.

People from diverse areas of interest and viewpoints participated to produce 350 ideas in the span of a month that were culled into a hierarchy and grouped into themes, producing a cogent set of recommendations. I enjoyed the process of discussing ideas with the audience of participants and voting.

Key is to get diverse participation and to ensure that the editor’s, the top people in charge, don’t use old filters on new ideas that result in watered down recommendations.

“Departing DARPA exec leaves legacy of creativity
After one short year, Peter Lee hopes his changes will have a lasting effect

By Henry Kenyon

Sep 29, 2010

The head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Transformational Convergence Technology Office is leaving his post this week to move to Microsoft. Peter Lee was only at DARPA for a year, but in that time he introduced new and unorthodox thinking for developing new technologies and how to tap the right mix of people to manage agency projects. Beginning in October, Lee will become the managing director of Microsoft Research Redmond.

Lee came to DARPA from Carnegie Mellon University, where he led the school’s computer science department. DARPA director Regina Duggan had invited him to relocate and create the TCTO. “I thought I was coming to start a computer science research office. Instead, she gave me a mission that didn’t even mention computers at all,” he said.

One of the primary missions that Duggan gave Lee was to sacrifice some efficiency in favor of creativity. Lee was charged to go beyond the normal contractor community, to develop unusual programs or programs with unorthodox structures, and to examine different types of people as program managers.

“You could say that the office that I helped to create here is less efficient in some ways, in terms of business practice. But maybe more effective in some ways in terms of uncovering possible technological surprise,” he said.

With Duggan’s blessing, Lee quickly set about changing how the agency selected contractors and program managers. The TCTO developed crowdsourcing techniques to reach beyond the traditional defense contractor and academic communities to expand the search for fresh ideas.

Among the things the TCTO looks for in program managers is youth. Lee said that the new cadre of managers at DARPA are 10 to 20 years younger than is common for the government. Although it was necessary to be careful in selecting younger people to run multimillion dollar programs, youth brings with it an openness to new ideas, he said.

Another change he instituted was to explore more short-term interactions. For example, over the past four months, DARPA had hosted a dozen top computer scientists, social scientists, behavioral scientists and economists who were developing new program concepts in an intense “Skunk Works” type operation. The agency has also hired very young, but highly accomplished, people for very short term program management assignments — some as short as 12 months — to “instigate and stimulate new ideas,” he said.”