The DARPA and Wellcome Leap Model

“We need more breakthroughs, and we need them faster,” Dugan stated. President Eisenhower created DARPA in 1957 in response to the USSR’s launching of Sputnik. In addition to funding, she said, that moment called for a way to challenge conventional thinking. DARPA is now the longest-standing, most consistent engine of radical breakthroughs in history. “It is an exceedingly long lever arm and a real accelerant in the whole ecosystem of innovation as it relates to national security,” she said.

Wellcome Leap (Leap) was built as the first global version of DARPA to solve global challenges. To do this, she explained, “we systematically stack the odds in favor of breakthroughs.” The model “does not guarantee success but improves the odds” with three distinguishing elements. First, every project must have an ambitious but testable goal that can be demonstrated at a convincing scale. Second, a diverse team is assembled and temporarily surged with a best-in-class program director, analogous to an orchestra with a strong conductor. Third, a sense of momentum is established by moving fast and “iterating like hell.” All of this rolls up, critically, to having a clear point of view to playing to win. In the first 12 months, Leap launched five programs and nine were underway within 32 months in such areas as metabolic health, children’s cognitive health, predictions of future disease progression, and other transformational ideas. If only one succeeds, Dugan said, the investment in all will pay off.

Pasteur’s Quadrant

To choose programs, Dugan explained, “We intersect what’s possible, albeit perhaps not yet proven, with what matters.” The decisions can be mapped against a framework developed by political scientist Donald Stokes in 1997.² In his framework, ideas are classified by the extent of their basic science content and the clarity of a practical application. Stokes named three quadrants: Bohr’s (high science content driven by curiosity, not a specific practical application); Edison’s (high practical application, driven less by scientific discovery); and the most desirable in this context, for breakthroughs, Pasteur’s quadrant, which is high both in basic science content and with a focused practical application in mind. She noted Stokes did not name the quadrant that is low in both science content and absent a practical application. The desire to control risk often causes people to land efforts in this quadrant, although the risk often rises here because “no one is switched on.” In contrast, in Pasteur’s quadrant, “the problem has urgency, the need is clear, and people are switched on. So, counterintuitively, and disproportionate to the risk, these efforts more often succeed.”

She continued, “The minute you realize you have to be in Pasteur’s quadrant, you have to organize differently because these opportunities are perishable in time.” To support capturing these opportunities, Leap supports networks of global players in synchronized activity. Funding decisions are made within 30 days and begin 30 days later. With fewer than 15 full-time staff, Leap has been able to operate with greater efficiency and organizational productivity than most other funding entities.

Using Wellcome Leap’s first project as an example, Dugan shared “what it feels like when it is working.” The Human Organs, Physiology, and Engineering, or HOPE, Program has two goals: to double the predictive value of a preclinical screen for treatments that involve the human immune system and to double the five-year survival rate of patients with end-stage renal disease thus pointing to a fully transplantable, non-rejected kidney within ten years. A personal connection to the importance of this second goal, was shared with all the HOPE program participants at a recent Principal Investigator’s meeting—a person who had received a kidney transplant was the keynote speaker. He shared his experience and provided deep motivation to find solutions. Scientists and engineers participating in HOPE are thus up close with the urgency felt by individuals, families, and communities. And researchers across Wellcome Leap programs report that they feel conditions are optimum for breakthroughs in the next 3 years, which she called the leading indicator of success.

In global health, there is a gap in the ecosystem and insufficient investment in the breakthroughs that would sit in Pasteur’s quadrant, and she urged scaling to hundreds more breakthrough programs to fill this gap. Leap was built to harness the urgency to meet global needs, but also to create a sense of hope. “We have multiple generations disillusioned by institutions telling them to set their expectations lower. They deserve someplace to put their faith. Our mission must be to reward that faith not with promises, but with progress. And we do that with one breakthrough at a time,” she concluded.

Discussion

Grasso reflected on the innovations in Pasteur’s Quadrant as mission-driven and observed these elements are often more present when facing a common enemy or crisis. Dugan agreed and suggested that this urgency is relevant across the health sector, even though health challenges are dispersed among many different types of conditions. She added that we must challenge ourselves, consistently, to realize that when someone is diagnosed with a health condition, it is a Sputnik moment for them, their family, their loved ones. They want and need the system to respond with a sense of urgency.

She added that Wellcome Leap has modeled intellectual property rights and ownership like DARPA has: The inventing organization owns the IP with the understanding that they will move successful efforts to scale through licensing or other commercialization strategies. The funding organization retains ‘step in’ rights to be used in the exceedingly rare situation that the host organization chooses not to commercialize or fails to do so. In Dugan’s experience, the objective is to work collaboratively with organizations so as to never need to exercise this right.

In answer to a question about funding, Dugan explained that Leap was seeded by the United Kingdom philanthropy Wellcome Trust at 250 million pounds and they doubled the investment a year later. In the first 3 years of operation, together with additional funding that came through partnerships, Wellcome Leap has almost $700M in resources to deploy. Her sense is that such an organization should scale to $1B per year to meet the need for breakthroughs. And one challenge in today’s geopolitical environment is that countries have become more nationalistic and less willing to come together in international collaborations. She suggested that global companies, who would benefit from the unlocking of new economic opportunities, and independent philanthropies may be the strategic key to scaling such efforts.

Dugan underscored the vital role of program directors. Pines, who worked at DARPA in the early 2000s, highlighted that DARPA and similar organizations hire top technical experts as program managers and provide a working culture that makes everyone want to be successful. Grasso referenced the Heilmeier Catechism, a set of questions crafted by former DARPA Director George Heilmeier.³ Dugan also noted that the whole ecosystem should be balanced in its organization if we want to have vibrant innovation. This requires investments in all 3 quadrants, and with a clear understanding of how they interact to benefit the whole. Policies, business, and regulations all have a role that DARPA-like organizations cannot solve alone, but other stakeholders cannot be mobilized without the initial breakthrough. In this way, DARPA-like organizations can serve as accelerants to the entire ecosystem.

Dugan took issue with the perception that Pasteur’s Quadrant efforts or other scientific efforts should never be considered failures because we always learn something. Indeed, she took issue with language like “fail fast, fail often,” which seems to miss the toll that failure can take on teams. She clarified, “if the thing you are working on is important, failure will sting.” While failure hurts, however, “it is the price we pay, for the privilege of working on something that matters” and “the only thing worse than the sting of failing at something that matters, is working on things that do not matter.”

Distilling Lessons from the Field of Science of Science

As Dashun Wang (Northwestern University) explained, the first review paper from the field now known as the “science of science” was published in Science in 2018, a special issue was published that same year, and a book that he co-authored was published in 2021.⁴ He clarified that using scientific curiosity and methods to study science itself rests on the shoulders of “founding giants,” including Robert K. Merton, Harriet Zuckerman, and others, combined with the availability of large datasets and new tools and techniques. This convergence can tell a complex story, he continued, including how innovative careers unfold, how collaborations happen, and how scientific progress emerges.

Looking at careers, Wang said the common view of when people do their greatest work has been when they are young. Data of Nobel Prize winners show the peak is around age 40. However, analyzing datasets of thousands of people over the course of their careers show breakthroughs occur at random. The chance of a breakthrough remains constant over time, whether in science, the arts, or other fields. “Hot streaks,” in which several great works are produced over a time period of few years, occur randomly within a career and are unassociated with productivity change, he said.

Wang noted a fundamental shift toward large teams to produce breakthroughs, with the LIGO interferometer experiment (detection of gravitational waves) as the “poster child” that involved more than 1,000 co-authors. To understand if bigger teams are more likely to produce breakthroughs, Wang and colleagues looked at datasets of articles, patents, and software projects.⁵ A pattern emerged that large teams tend to develop and further existing ideas, while smaller teams tend to disrupt current ways of thinking. Both large and small teams are essential to a flourishing science and technology (S&T) ecology.

While many anecdotes show the public impact and value of scientific research, Wang noted the need for data to ground assertions. Researchers looked across multiple fields to graph the public uses of science in terms of marketplace innovation, public policy, and human interest. They found strong alignment between public use and science use (that is, the public draws on the highest impact papers) and between public funding and public use (that is, fields with greater public use receive greater funding).⁶

Wang and colleagues were asked to apply their insights to improve innovation capacity at Northwestern. As one example, they found that men hold most Northwestern patents, although their work is not more commercializable or more frequently cited. He also highlighted that “research shows that women are more likely to invent for women.” Thus, he emphasized that inequities in who becomes an inventor also can lead to inequities in who benefits from invention. The work of a female faculty member served as an example of inequity in who invents and who benefits from inventions. Once the professor saw how others were benefiting from her research, she filed her first patent. There are enormous opportunities to understand and improve science and innovation through science of science research, he suggested. Drawing on this knowledge to make R&D even 5 percent more efficient can have high returns to society and can enhance the success and global standings of institutions, Wang concluded.

Patterns of Innovation Activity Over Time

Papers and patents have become less disruptive over time, stated Russell Funk (University of Minnesota), who researches patterns of innovation activity. As context, he explained while there is unprecedented expansion in scientific and technological output, concern is growing that innovative activity is slowing. To understand if and how this is occurring, as well as to reconcile theories of innovation with recent breakthroughs, Funk explained he and colleagues use a novel, theoretically informed measure to document and characterize long-term changes in the nature of discovery and inventions represented in papers and patents. The metric looks at citation patterns across fields and time periods to understand if research is “maximally disrupting,” “maximally consolidating,” or someplace between. They found a decline of disruptive papers and patents over the past 65 years.

To reconcile the patterns, they found the absolute number of highly disruptive publications has remained constant, despite huge increases in the total number. This pattern may help explain why there are examples of major innovations while also slowdowns in more macro indicators. He also noted, as illustrated by Wang with the Ligo, that breakthroughs can be important even if not disruptive. He also noted more knowledge than ever as shown in the number of papers and patents, but authors cite a smaller fraction of works and are often citing their own or their team’s work. These trends are inversely associated with disruption.

Funk commented that the paper in Nature on their research received more reactions than expected.⁷ Common reactions were that innovative work is hard to get through peer review, funders pick lower risk projects, proposal requirements limit opportunities for serendipity, scientific evaluation stresses quantitative metrics, the “low-hanging fruit” of easy discoveries have already been made, and the burden of knowledge has become great.

While the study was not designed to suggest actionable mechanisms to address the decline, he lauded efforts like the workshop to bring together stakeholders. He observed that evaluations based on quantitative benchmarks have benefits but they push scientists toward less disruptive work. He suggested research funders can impact disruptive research through review and funding changes. More data to understand innovation outside of the traditional channels of papers and patents—such as software, blog posts, or products—would be useful, but these outputs are often proprietary, expensive, or hard to use. The USPTO PatentsView could be a model to accelerate breakthroughs.⁸

Philanthropic Support for the Study of Innovation

Sandra Barbosu (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation) described the Sloan Foundation’s support to measure innovation and support the science of science. Overall, the foundation awards about 400 grants annually.⁹ Support for science of science falls within the foundation’s economic program, as a way to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of public and private research funds. The three main inputs for science of science are expert scientists embedded in a supportive community; important, timely research questions; and high-quality data. As one example of a question to answer, she posed understanding the impact of fellowships on the trajectory of early career researchers.

Other projects include support for the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Science of Science Funding Working Group, the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation, and development of improved data and data access. In 2023, the foundation awarded a grant to conduct the first large-scale survey on management practices and culture within research labs. Barbosu said the science-of-science field has taken off after a long period in which Sloan was among the only funders. Open research questions include whether science funders take enough risks, if peer review is the most effective for advancing innovative science, and potential alternatives.

Discussion

A fundamental scientist commented on the challenge of showing broader impacts in his proposals and wondered how the science of science might approach this. Wang suggested that researchers have observed linkages between fundamental research and marketplace applications. Barbosu added that datasets have begun to focus on other impacts beyond patents. Funk noted the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science at the University of Michigan is quantifying how science funding supports other activities, such as purchase of supplies, payment to undergraduates, and development of new skills as a way to measure side products of research.

Wang foresees that new data frontiers will emerge, for example around start-ups, but currently, some of these data are of mixed quality. Linking and having access to data, especially for those with less resources, is a challenge, Funk pointed out. Barbosu noted that Sloan supports making information available to the broader public such as through shorter-format papers and podcasts. As another resource, Wang mentioned open data lake for the science of science research.¹⁰

In terms of new approaches to promotion and tenure, Funk acknowledged that quantitative benchmarks remain the most commonly used in an attempt to be countable and objective. Wang suggested new patterns may emerge, and the challenge will be to incorporate these findings into decision making. Barbosu said the Sloan Foundation is interested in evidence to develop better metrics for tenure. Another example of impact to look at, a participant suggested, is the impact of research on standards.

Funding High-Risk, Transformational Energy Projects

Evelyn Wang, Director of ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), stressed the role of public-private partnerships in innovation and the acceleration of technologies needed in the United States. ARPA-E is set up to spawn innovation to support new ideas to reduce emissions, improve efficiency, improve energy infrastructure resilience, and reduce imports. In disrupting existing learning curves, the agency takes “many shots on goal” to address a specific area of need, recognizing not all will be successful. Acknowledging the valleys of death that characterize taking an idea from research to scale, she suggested another way to frame them: as mountains of opportunity (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

Move to market, via mountains of opportunity. SOURCE: Evelyn Wang, Workshop Presentation, June 14, 2023.

ARPA-E Program Directors identify white spaces or technological gaps and to pitch ideas internally to solve them. Then, a Funding Opportunity Announcement invites open competition. Program Directors undertake active project management with awardees. The hope is after several years, teams will have a proof of concept in which the private sector or other parts of the U.S. government will invest. Also unique is ARPA-E’s Technology-to-Market team that helps align technology with market needs. To complement ARPA-E’s early-stage funding, the agency launched the Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) program. This helps mature a proof-of-concept so that it is sufficiently de-risked for the private sector to invest. Metrics and milestones are core to the mission.

As an example, Director Wang discussed an ARPA-E program to reduce methane emissions. A well-known problem in the oil and gas industry, a key challenge is the difficulty and expense in detecting methane. About eight years ago, ARPA-E designed a program called Methane Observation Networks with Innovative Technology to Obtain Reductions (MONITOR). Two companies proposed successful solutions. The oil and gas industry was initially skeptical about detecting methane at a viable cost, but now, she said, “everybody is talking about methane emissions.” She continued, “This is where we see our role—to seed ideas, identify white spaces, and push the boundaries so ultimately these technologies can be deployed.” Other examples Wang briefly touched on were Sila Nanotechnologies, which has innovated materials in lithium-anode batteries, and InventWood from the University of Maryland, which modifies wood to make it stronger and lighter than steel.

ARPA-E wants to transform the energy landscape, Wang concluded. Impacts include the 135 companies formed, about 200 projects that have attracted $11.4 billion in private sector follow-on funding, and more than 1,000 patents. Grasso distilled several axioms of innovation he took from Wang’s talk: being purpose-driven, taking risks with many shots on goal, engaging stakeholders, and being user-centric.

Innovation Models in the Private Sector

Cordell Hardy manages an international R&D organization for shared technical services within 3M. His group is also responsible for identifying technology areas with the potential to be funded by the U.S. government, such as in energy, advanced manufacturing, and data science. The 3M Innovation Model tries to balance investments in research (sometime in partnership with universities or the government) and development (working with customers around the world). An understanding of unarticulated needs is brought back to the labs to collaborate, commercialize, and sell solutions.

3M works with K-12 education to interest people in science and also publishes a State of Science Index to quantify public trust in science.¹¹ Many innovative partnerships emerged from the pandemic, for example to reallocate resources and increase production of personal protective equipment, COVID-19 tests, and other products.

From his industrial lens, Hardy said, “To incentivize innovation, tie it to profit!” While he recognized the emotive connection referred to by Dr. Dugan in Pasteur’s Quadrant, it is not always relevant in a for-profit company. He noted most current discussions and definitions about innovation do not consider profitability. In making private-sector investments, he said, it is not just innovation, creativity, or need, but profitability. He shared three tips in this regard.

First, business life cycles must be part of the dialogue. He suggested looking for an opportunity for researchers and program managers to “lean into the profit story”—at least offer a plausible path. Second, de-risk an idea by determining how to beat competitors, identify critical initial customers, and other considerations. He recommended what authors Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor describe as a commoditized process for innovation.¹² Third, develop a business model to figure out how to turn a great idea into a business and value proposition.

In the private sector, innovating for profit means consistently investing in business building, Hardy concluded. There are no guarantees, but investments can be de-risked through well-crafted narratives, comprehensive net present value modeling, and business model frameworks.

Opportunities for Transformation: Bio Sector and Beyond

People can be incentivized to innovate, suggested Len Polizzotto (Northeastern University), drawing on examples from the bio sector. He began by identifying four pillars to incentivize innovation: (1) self-satisfaction, so people feel they are doing something that matters and others care about; (2) collaboration, by building off each other’s ideas and giving feedback; (3) recognition through publications, awards, promotions, and other means; and (4) funding (providing resources, ideally in tranches rather than all at once).

Most R&D goes nowhere, which Polizzotto said is because a need is defined based on what people are good at, rather than what stakeholders see as a problem. He suggested instead answering seven questions to improve the probability of success. What is the: (1) situation in the ecosystem; (2) problem; (3) reason the program remains unsolved; (4) actual need to address; (5) solution better than any alternatives; (6) risks and their mitigation; and (7) a “minimal viable experiment.”

Polizzotto shared examples from three ecosystems. At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, student teams undertake major qualifying projects built on the four pillars and answers to the seven questions above, such as one group who developed a biomaterial to treat muscle loss from battlefield injuries. Northeastern University’s Faculty Impact Engines support game-changing academic research through a similar process. The Neurocritical Care Society’s Curing Coma Campaign is trying to develop a cure for coma, with shared data, discovery into the brain, and standards of care and best practices.

Discussion

An audience member agreed with Hardy’s statement that companies are typically forced to put “profit first,” which is often at odds with social and environmental value. They asked what could be done to incentivize companies to prioritize social and environmental value and make it profitable to do so. Hardy observed that companies range in how they consider these values to reflect shareholders’ or owners’ priorities. In a capitalist system, the answer will lie in broader population expectations of companies, he suggested. Grasso referred to business cases in Higher Ambition as useful.¹³

Asked about the responsibility of industry to support basic science, Polizzotto harkened to the days of Bell Labs and other industry-funded labs, but industry has shifted from basic research to development. Universities and the government must undertake the fundamental research, but the nation has not fully adjusted, he posited. Hardy noted the need to look at policy, taxation, and government structures that facilitate the ecosystem needed. Grasso added that philanthropy can take a long-term funding view. Pines also noted the current climate for basic and translational science offers some of the best public funding opportunities in decades, and industry funding to universities has increased.

When asked how to correct mis-aligned incentives when stakeholders have conflicting priorities and needs, Hardy said within an organization, it is the responsibility of senior leadership. Across organizations, a governance process to align metrics is needed, he suggested. Absent an external influence, the conflicts will persist.

India

Ambuj Sagar (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) said given India’s size and diversity, he would share a flavor of the innovation landscape and its multiple innovation cultures. As context, India’s GDP is about 6 to 7 percent of the global total, but its research expenditures are much lower.¹⁴ India’s investment in R&D as a share of its GDP is much lower than other G20 countries, at about 0.65 percent in 2018. In contrast to other innovating countries, the public sector dominates R&D investments, at more than 60 percent. The implication, he continued, is that private firms are not investing much in innovation. Across the top 2,500 private R&D spenders worldwide, 25 are in India, and only one is in the top 500. Looking at researchers per 1 million people, India has about 253—much fewer than China or the United States.

Education in India emphasizes science and technology, although participation by women is low, particularly in engineering. University-industry-government collaborations are not common, Sagar continued, although there are efforts to increase engagement. International co-authorships are fairly high, in part because many Indians are trained abroad and maintain their connections. Most patents filed in India are from foreign applicants, many of whom operate multinational R&D centers. These do contribute to the local innovation ecosystem, but not to a very large extent.

Speaking about the startup ecosystem, Sagar said that India is doing very well on that front and has the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world. Regarding the broader Indian innovation ecosystem, Sagar pointed out that there are many urgent developmental challenges facing India, combined with lack of political will, which makes India still lag behind some big global innovation players like the U.S., Europe, Japan etc.

He highlighted that public policy has played an important role in India in deployment of digital technologies to address developmental challenges in India. There are pockets of research and innovation excellence (such as IT, biotech, and pharma) and increasing engagement with the global innovation ecosystem, driven partly by the Indian diaspora. While institutionally conservative, there is an individually dynamic and risk-taking culture. India holds the presidency of the G20 and launched an initiative called Startup20.¹⁵ There have been limited systemic and systematic efforts to spur innovation, for example through development of an innovation policy in 2013, but it has been mostly aspirational. He concluded there is scope for positive culture change in government agencies, firms, and universities through resources, incentive structures, and processes.

Japan

Japan has a strong innovation culture and record of achievements in basic and applied research, reported Taiga Nakamura (IBM). Strengths are in automotive, robotics, electronics, and materials, and less in IT, biotech, and software development. Japan’s unique challenges are its slow growth trend and aging population. This affects how the country thinks about innovation, Nakamura suggested. Japan’s culture of innovation is based on long-term vision and collectivism. Companies focus on efficient production and quality control. The workforce is highly educated and works long hours, with a strong tradition of valuing quality. Japanese companies tend to increase competitiveness through steady improvement, as opposed to the mindset of startups characterized by individualism, bursts of creativity, and risk-taking.

Major companies conduct their own R&D, including basic research. Several government ministries support public-private partnerships to promote innovation and provide guidance. The past decade has seen a shift to open models, through investments in innovation creation and incorporation of national universities. One example is the IBM Quantum National Scale Partnerships, announced at the G7 Summit in Tokyo. Another is a collaboration to facilitate semiconductor production.

Japan’s educational system is changing, as articulated in a vision called Society 5.0. The traditional cramming style of learning was needed for industrialization and mass production, Nakamura commented, but the next era needs to encourage more individual creativity and risk taking. The goal is to blend old and new ways that will work in context. Japan is also trying to encourage more diversity and inclusion, as illustrated in IBM Japan’s efforts to involve women, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, and those who are caregivers.

African Continent

Chux Daniels (University of Pretoria; University of Sussex) noted his perspectives are based on his co-affiliations at universities in South Africa and the United Kingdom and his role as the Director of the Transformative Innovation Africa Hub (TIAH), part of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC).¹⁶ TIAH and TIPC emphasize the role of innovation, science and technology, in transformation with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals. This involves creating new narratives, a set of policy-oriented experiments¹⁷ with demonstrators, research, capacity building, development of a network of people and organizations, and established processes of co-creation of knowledge and policy interventions geared towards long-term systems change.

Daniels delineated three frames of innovation policy across time: R&D and regulation, which was dominant in the 1960s–1980s; national systems of innovation, dominant from the 1990s to the present; and an emerging frame of transformative change because the status quo is not working and the gap between countries is growing. It suggests R&D to support innovation to improve public welfare and the environment. Change must take place in multiple dimensions, foster innovations that help address challenges at socio-technical systems, address barriers at regime levels and support alternative and sustainable practices by niche actors. The Africa Hub, one of three TIPC hubs, is working in sub-Saharan Africa on policy experiments related to water management (South Africa), electronic waste (Ghana), inclusive rural education (Kenya), online higher education (Senegal), and others.

Daniels offered a generic theory of change for transformative innovation policy (TIP) evaluation. The framework can be used to deepen understanding and unblock barriers that hinder innovation from fostering transformative and long-term systems change.

He closed by inviting participants to access the TIP Resource Lab,¹⁸ TIP Knowledge Community, and other resources.¹⁹ And join forces with TIAH and TIPC in deepening understanding on wats that science, technology, and innovation can better support global efforts in transforming our world.

China

Speaking from the European Union’s largest think tank focusing solely on China, Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau (Mercator Institute for China Studies) described China’s all-of-state effort in science and technology. The country has risen steadily in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index in terms of R&D investments, patents, and publications,²⁰ but some observers argue that China has had less success in translating its outputs into innovations.²¹ China, compared with other countries, is at the extreme in terms of top-down, state-funded innovation.

“Indigenous innovation” was introduced in the 2006 mid- to long-term science and development plan, which launched 16 meta-projects. The current five-year plan identifies seven cutting-edge fields (new-generation AI, quantum, integrated circuits, brain science, gene and biotechnology, clinical medicine and health, and space, earth, sea, and polar expeditions). In the early 2000s, the theme was to catch up and play a larger role in international systems. By the mid-2010s, the concept of leap-frogging dominated, in which China would invest in unproven technologies with the aim to benefit from a technological revolution. That quest for leadership continues, he said, but since 2018, China has also looked to break its reliance on foreign technology. Leaders say that the socialist system concentrates resources to overcome chokepoints through a whole-of-nation effort.

Within the innovation chain, Beijing is reforming legacy research labs, which were traditionally under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Research universities are increasing activity. A tiered system has been set up, in which companies move up if they are performing well. A group of 10,000 “little giants” have developed a technological niche and are government-supported. Industrial zones, a hallmark of opening and decentralizing the economy, are being consolidated into larger clusters. Innovation corridors are being set up around the largest cities.

Groenewegen-Lau summarized several trends and matters of concern. China’s innovation system is increasingly hierarchical with a greater degree of central coordination and control. Its global rise as an S&T superpower is prompting other countries to consider changes in their industrial and innovation policies. Western actors are concerned about how to engage with China’s innovation ecosystem to protect research security and integrity. Chinese researchers are under growing pressure to contribute to the country’s pursuit of technological self-sufficiency and other major strategic goals. As one indication, joint publications are declining.

Discussion

The panelists discussed innovations across and within countries, beginning with the role of industry. In Japan, Nakamura said, companies tend to invest in research from basic to commercialization, and universities supply talent. In India, Sagar said, there is enormous diversity, and large conglomerates like Tata and smaller enterprises act differently in the innovation space. Daniels noted the range in different countries in Africa. Some companies are funding research, providing research infrastructure, and building capacity. There are opportunities for industry actors to help shape and implement policy. He expressed the hope for industry-university collaboration to continue, especially in the area of digital innovations, which has experienced significant growth in recent years. Groenewegen-Lau referred to the tiers of companies that China has identified, noting that interaction at the local levels that can involve smaller companies, including foreign enterprises. He also mentioned that China’s central model is to have companies leading the innovation process and universities and research institutes serving that process.

MITRE Labs

Christine Callsen (MITRE Labs) characterized MITRE at the intersection of the government, industry, and university sectors. The not-for-profit runs six Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies, as well as other R&D programs across the government, including with industry and academia. About half of MITRE is organized by sponsor or mission; the other half (MITRE Labs) is organized by technical domain, such as health or cybersecurity. In her role, she explores how MITRE can provide greater impact to the S&T community. Reflecting other presenters, she said recent legislation (Build Back Better, CHIPS + Science, and Inflation Reduction Act) represents a once-in-a-generation S&T investment, pointing out the funds appropriated are bigger than the Manhattan Project and Apollo Project combined in today’s dollars.

MITRE brings ecosystem engagement expertise to big complex problems, Callsen said. One example is through place-based innovation such as the MITRE BlueTech Lab, which will provide advanced underseas testing, innovation, and collaboration to facilitate research in climate change, security, environmental protection, maritime commerce, and other areas. MITRE also has developed suites of tools to support innovation and ecosystem development to bring rigor around the science of engagement. The ASSEMBLE framework brings together tools related to management and governance, multi-partner engagement, and decision analysis. Other resources include ARPAMAX for transformational ARPA-type organizations, Acquisition in the Digital Age,²² and toolkits to foster public-private partnerships and innovation. Elements emphasized across these tools include a shared vision at the outset, multidimensional thinking and perspectives, common understandings of problem and solutions, and transparency. Cooperative decision making, a clear process for dispute resolution, resources, coordinated implementation, and shared accountability are also critical, she added.

Argonne National Laboratory

Megan Clifford (Argonne) leads partnerships at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. She explained that Argonne is a multidisciplinary research lab managed for DOE by UChicago Argonne LLC. She highlighted the Advanced Photon Source and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility used by thousands of researchers from around the world every year as examples of successful results from decades of federal investment.

Argonne’s framework for innovation encompasses four elements: community engagement, forefront science and engineering, expanded partnerships, and diverse STEM workforce, built on a foundation of a supportive culture. These elements have contributed to innovation at different scales, which she illustrated with examples at the lab, state, and regional levels. First, the Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) embeds early-career Ph.D. founders at several DOE national labs to grow their businesses and work alongside researchers. It provides entrepreneurs with access to business mentorship, equipment, and the time to explore and pivot, while Argonne scientists learn about a business mindset and entrepreneurship, so it is two-way learning. The program is over-subscribed, which she said means talent and innovations for a clean energy future are being left on the table.

State-wide, Argonne helped form the Clean Tech Economy Coalition to compete for the Build Back Better regional challenge. Although the coalition did not secure the award, she noted useful takeaways for building large coalitions. They must be laser focused on the purpose and goal. It is also important that there is a diversity of partners and a clear understanding of each partner’s role, all behind a strong leader. Now formed, the coalition will pursue other opportunities. Clifford’s regional example is the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2), which involves seven states and institutions committed to growing the Midwest regional hydrogen value chain to deliver positive climate and community impact.

Clifford returned to the point about culture as the foundation for innovation. Five years ago, Argonne went through a process to define its core values. With feedback from hundreds of employees, five values were articulated: impact, safety, respect, integrity, and teamwork. These are now embedded in hiring practices, performance evaluations, awards, and other efforts. Being explicit about the values attracts talent and helps create a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment in which employees and partnerships can thrive.

Argonne has developed an Implementation Playbook for lab-supported regional economic development. She suggested that the phased approach it contains and the case study about Argonne in Chicago located within Chicago’s south side might be useful for others.²³

Discussion

Callsen and Clifford were asked how researchers can use MITRE and Argonne facilities. MITRE can run experiments on behalf of a requestor, or they can be co-designed through shared R&D. Clifford explained that Argonne can perform work for others on a cost-recovery basis or can have collaborative R&D. Argonne has a peer-reviewed proposal process for its designated national user facilities where access is either free if results are published or on a cost-recovery basis for proprietary research that is not intended for the public domain.

A participant urged the need to supercharge funding, noting that Argonne and other national labs have great opportunities, but not enough people can access them. Additional investments would get innovations and early-stage research out of the lab, she stressed. She also noted the impact if industry, and not only institutions of higher education, advocates for more access to the labs. When asked about the federal approach to entrepreneurship, Clifford noted support across the government, such as DOE’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), NSF’s and DOE’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) and a working group on entrepreneurship established by the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

In terms of regional impact and collaboration, there is a national push for place-based innovation, a participant observed. MITRE is seeking to support the government in these areas, Callsen said. Clifford said Argonne and other national labs contribute to regional ecosystems but also support innovation in other places. Federal investment is a great kick starter, as seen in quantum, she noted. She said Argonne seeks a diversity of innovators and recognizes the need for more outreach.