Can Government Be More Productive Via Open Innovation?
As we prepare to watch the final launch and voyage of Space Shuttle Atlantis we’re reminded of the bold vision former U.S. President John F. Kennedy put forth, calling for an all out innovation challenge to land a human on the Moon, and to do so within the decade (1960′s). The launch and return of Atlantis will end an epic saga for NASA as they look to the future, to a return to the Moon, onward to Mars and eventually beyond the Red Planet.
President Kennedy also famously stated; “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Now with the rise of Open Government initiatives around the globe that seek to co-create alongside their respective citizenry and beyond their borders, we’re entering an age where individuals can help their government, or even another country’s government, perform better.
We recently discussed necessity as a premiere catalyst in innovation and many countries around the world are facing challenges that necessitate changes in how their governments operate. With so much focus on collaboration and open governance, we wanted to share the tactics that have worked best for us and the results they are generating with NASA today.
Kumbaya or Competition?
At TopCoder, we love our community, in fact, our community is everything to us and they, the 301,000+ members fully understand that our model is based on individuals competing against one another with the lion’s share of the prize money going to those who supplied the best solutions, ideas, code and graphics. We are a proud meritocracy. Yes, we have a cadre of reasons our community building efforts have been successful, but at the core, our success stems from communicating with our members that competition is our focus. And we believe, competition can help an agency or company be more productive.
The Open Innovation paradigm, especially as it relates to governance brings with it many varying opinions on best tactics. Some are centered around a Utopian sense of collaboration, where participation in and of itself is an end goal. While there is no doubt certain co-creation exercises can procure benefit for a government and its citizenry, it’s possible to go further by shifting goals away from simple participation to a focus on outputs and outcomes. Competition has proven to be a force, bar none, for delivering efficiency, productivity and innovation.
Open Innovation Liftoff
Our experience thus far working with U.S. Government agencies has been astronomical… literally. In late 2009, we launched the NASA-TopCoder Challenge which asked our community to improve upon an existing, in-use algorithm.
As NASA continues to study long-duration space-flight, like the kind that will bring a manned vessel back to the Moon and onward to Mars, innovative ways to ensure the crew’s safety is of paramount importance. This particular challenge dealt with the variable contents of the on-board medical supply kit and optimizing usage for an almost innumerable number of ailments, illnesses and injuries that could take place on such a long flight.
The top performing solution, born from competition, improved upon the existing NASA algorithm by a factor of 360x, shrinking the time to optimized utilization decision for a specific mission simulation set from 3 minutes, down to 30 seconds.
Read what a NASA team member had to say about these results here.
On the heels of the above challenge, NASA created the NTL or NASA Tournament Lab. The NTL provides an online virtual facility for NASA researches with a computational or complex data processing challenge to “order” a solution, just like they would order laboratory tests or supplies. When a solution is “ordered” a competition is launched and a winning solution is delivered.
This streamlining, and the ability for NASA to attain high quality solutions faster and more inexpensively than before is an example of how a 21st century government can become much more productive through open innovation practices.
To read about our newest government project with both NASA & DARPA, involving multi-satellite functionality and the International Space Station (ISS), click here. To connect with our team to discuss your agency’s or corporation’s challenges, please click the button just below.
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