The DARPA Model for Transformative Technologies: Perspectives on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
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The authors have done a masterful job of charting the important story of DARPA, one of the key catalysts of technological innovation in US recent history. By plotting the development, achievements and structure of the leading world agency of this kind, this book stimulates new thinking in the field of technological innovation with bearing on how to respond to climate change, pandemics, cyber security and other global problems of our time. The DARPA Model provides a useful guide for governmental agency and policy leaders, and for anybody interested in the role of governments in technological innovation.
—Dr. Kent Hughes, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
This volume contains a remarkable collection of extremely insightful articles on the world’s most successful advanced technology agency. Drafted by the leading US experts on DARPA, it provides a variety of perspectives that in turn benefit from being presented together in a comprehensive volume. It reviews DARPA’s unique role in the U.S. innovation system, as well as the challenges DARPA and its clones face today. As the American model is being considered for adoption by a number of countries worldwide, this book makes a welcome and timely contribution to the policy dialogue on the role played by governments in stimulating technological innovation.
— Prof. Charles Wessner, Georgetown University
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has played a remarkable role in the creation new transformative technologies, revolutionizing defense with drones and precision-guided munitions, and transforming civilian life with portable GPS receivers, voice-recognition software, self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and, most famously, the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet.
Other parts of the U.S. Government and some foreign governments have tried to apply the ‘DARPA model’ to help develop valuable new technologies. But how and why has DARPA succeeded? Which features of its operation and environment contribute to this success? And what lessons does its experience offer for other U.S. agencies and other governments that want to develop and demonstrate their own ‘transformative technologies’?
This book is a remarkable collection of leading academic research on DARPA from a wide range of perspectives, combining to chart an important story from the Agency’s founding in the wake of Sputnik, to the current attempts to adapt it to use by other federal agencies. Informative and insightful, this guide is essential reading for political and policy leaders, as well as researchers and students interested in understanding the success of this agency and the lessons it offers to others.
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Witness(es): William Bonvillian, Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr Peter Highnam, Deputy Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Witness(es): Dr Antoine Petit, Chairman and CEO, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS); Dr Regina Dugan, Chief Executive Officer, Wellcome Leap.
The DARPA Model for Transformative Technologies: Perspectives on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
William Boone Bonvillian, Richard Van Atta, and Patrick Windham (eds) | January 2020
510 pp. | 8 B&W illustrations | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781783747917
ISBN Hardback: 9781783747924
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783747931
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783747948
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783747955
ISBN Hardback: 9781783747924
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783747931
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783747948
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783747955
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783747962
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0184
Subject codes: BIC: JP (Politics and Government), JPP (Public administration), TBX (History of engineering and technology), KCP (Political economy); BISAC: TEC025000 (TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Military Science), TEC056000 (TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History), POL069000 (POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Military Policy); OCLC Number: 1193020437.
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Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: DARPA—The Innovation Icon
Patrick Windham and Richard Van Atta
PART I: PERSPECTIVES ON DARPA
2. Fifty Years of Innovation and Discovery
Richard Van Atta
3. NSF and DARPA as Models for Research Funding: An Institutional Analysis
Michael J. Piore, Phech Colatat, and Elisabeth Beck Reynolds
Michael J. Piore, Phech Colatat, and Elisabeth Beck Reynolds
4. The Connected Science Model for Innovation—The DARPA Model
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
5. The Value of Vision in Radical Technological Innovation
Tamara L. Carleton
Tamara L. Carleton
6. ARPA Does Windows: The Defense Underpinning of the PC Revolution
Glenn R. Fong
Glenn R. Fong
7. Rethinking the Role of the State in Technology Development: DARPA and the Case for Embedded Network Governance
Erica R. H. Fuchs
Erica R. H. Fuchs
8. DARPA’s Process for Creating New Programs
David W. Cheney and Richard Van Atta
David W. Cheney and Richard Van Atta
9. Some Questions about the DARPA Model
Patrick Windham
Patrick Windham
PART II: THE ROLE OF DARPA PROGRAM MANAGERS
10. DARPA—Enabling Technical Innovation
Jinendra Ranka
Jinendra Ranka
11. Program Management at DARPA: A Personal Perspective
Larry Jackel
Larry Jackel
PART III: APPLYING THE DARPA MODEL IN OTHER SITUATIONS
12. Lessons from DARPA for Innovating in Defense Legacy Sectors
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
13. ARPA-E and DARPA: Applying the DARPA Model to Energy Innovation
William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta
William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta
14. IARPA: A Modified DARPA Innovation Model
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
15. Does NIH need a DARPA?
Robert Cook-Deegan
Robert Cook-Deegan
PART IV: CONCLUSIONS
16. Lessons from DARPA’s Experience
Richard Van Atta, Patrick Windham and William B. Bonvillian
16. Lessons from DARPA’s Experience
Richard Van Atta, Patrick Windham and William B. Bonvillian
Recommendations for Further Reading
List of Illustrations and Tables
Index
© 2019 William B. Bonvillian, Richard Van Atta, and Patrick Windham. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (CC BY-NC-ND). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
1. Introduction: DARPA—The Innovation Icon
Patrick Windham and Richard Van Atta
This introductory chapter focuses on DARPA’s key features—its mission, organization, linkages to other organizations, and "political design”—and how those features have contributed to its success.
PART I: PERSPECTIVES ON DARPA
2. Fifty Years of Innovation and Discovery
Richard Van Atta
Chapter 2, by Richard Van Atta, is a history of DARPA’s first fifty years.
3. NSF and DARPA as Models for Research Funding: An Institutional Analysis
Michael J. Piore, Phech Colatat, and Elisabeth Beck Reynolds
Michael J. Piore, Phech Colatat, and Elisabeth Beck Reynolds
Chapter 3, by Michael Piore, Phech Colatat and Elisabeth Beck Reynolds, compares DARPA’s culture with more traditional federal R&D agencies, including NSF.
4. The Connected Science Model for Innovation—The DARPA Model
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
Chapter 4, by William B. Bonvillian, discusses the "DARPA Model”, and particularly how it follows an approach developed during World War II that connects cutting-edge science with the solution of specific technical challenges.
5. The Value of Vision in Radical Technological Innovation
Tamara L. Carleton
Tamara L. Carleton
Chapter 5, by Tamara Carleton, discusses the central role of technical vision in DARPA’s operations and results.
6. ARPA Does Windows: The Defense Underpinning of the PC Revolution
Glenn R. Fong
Glenn R. Fong
Chapter 6, by Glenn R. Fong, is a history of how DARPA-funded inventions placed a central role in the development of personal computers and their software.
7. Rethinking the Role of the State in Technology Development: DARPA and the Case for Embedded Network Governance
Erica R. H. Fuchs
Erica R. H. Fuchs
Chapter 7, by Erica R. H. Fuchs, discusses DARPA’s governance approach as embodying an imbedded network.
8. DARPA’s Process for Creating New Programs
David W. Cheney and Richard Van Atta
David W. Cheney and Richard Van Atta
Chapter 8, by David W. Cheney and Richard Van Atta, explores the processes through which DARPA creates new programs, looking at the origins of several past DARPA programs.
9. Some Questions about the DARPA Model
Patrick Windham
Patrick Windham
Chapter 9, by Patrick Windham, addresses a set of questions that have been raised concerning the DARPA model.
PART II: THE ROLE OF DARPA PROGRAM MANAGERS
10. DARPA—Enabling Technical Innovation
Jinendra Ranka
Jinendra Ranka
Chapter 10, by Jinendra Ranka, a former DARPA program manager, provides a perspective on the role of DARPA program managers in the DARPA model.
11. Program Management at DARPA: A Personal Perspective
Larry Jackel
Larry Jackel
Chapter 11, by Larry Jackel, a former DARPA program manager, provides a perspective on the role of DARPA program managers in the DARPA model.
PART III: APPLYING THE DARPA MODEL IN OTHER SITUATIONS
12. Lessons from DARPA for Innovating in Defense Legacy Sectors
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
Chapter 12, by William B. Bonvillian, examines the lessons that DARPA’s model of creating innovation provides for other, older, "legacy sector” parts of the Department of Defense.
13. ARPA-E and DARPA: Applying the DARPA Model to Energy Innovation
William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta
William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta
Chapter 13, by William B. Bonvillian and Richard Van Atta, discusses how leaders might effectively apply the DARPA model to the (then) relatively new Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as well as organizational lessons from ARPA-E itself.
14. IARPA: A Modified DARPA Innovation Model
William B. Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian
Chapter 14, by William B. Bonvillian, discusses IARPA, another DARPA clone.
15. Does NIH need a DARPA?
Robert Cook-Deegan
Robert Cook-Deegan
Chapter 15, by Robert Cook Deegan, explores the possible application of the DARPA model to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
PART IV: CONCLUSIONS
16. Lessons from DARPA’s Experience
Richard Van Atta, Patrick Windham and William B. Bonvillian
16. Lessons from DARPA’s Experience
Richard Van Atta, Patrick Windham and William B. Bonvillian
Chapter 16, by Richard Van Atta, Patrick Windham and William B. Bonvillian, summarizes key lessons from DARPA’s experience on how to structure an organization to successfully create new, innovative technologies.