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> First, whatever the hell DARPA is, it is not a demand-side approach to innovation policy, which the OECD defines as things like public procurement, regulation
by fouc 5y ago
> First, whatever the hell DARPA is, it is not a demand-side approach to innovation policy, which the OECD defines as things like public procurement, regulations, standards and consumer policies. Second, demand-side, by definition, is pretty much the opposite of mission-driven. Third, DARPA has never had scale-up and commercialization of research as a mission. And fourth, DARPA, to the extent it ever worked, worked because it had a relatively narrow mission, not a grab-bag like “agri-food, clean-tech and digital services”.
https://higheredstrategy.com/a-very-canadian-innovation-proposal/ https://higheredstrategy.com/a-very-canadian-innovation-prop...
- mattkrause 5y agoI don’t think that’s right about DARPA and commercialization. I worked on a few programs and commercialization came up regularly. The PMs wanted to know your plans for regulatory testing/approval, if you had met with the relevant agencies, were you filing patents, etc. This literally started at the day 1, the proposers’ day, and the end goal was very clearly to have an off-the-shelf option that the DoD could buy en masse. They have other organizations, like In-Q-Tel that are also clearly meant to push this along.