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Open Innovation and the Evolving Federal R&D Enterprise
Citation:
Kuhn, K., H. Amos, S. Patel, R. Gordon, C. Nelson, AND J. Benforado. Open Innovation and the Evolving Federal R&D Enterprise. 254th American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition, Washington, District Of Columbia, August 20 - 24, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Open Innovation approaches, from crowdsourcing to prize competitions, are being adopted by federal agencies at an accelerating rate over the last ten years. Open Innovation is a problem‐solving approach that seeks to gather and develop external ideas and solutions in addition to internal ones. Advantages of using Open Innovation in federal research and development (R&D) include: expedited timelines, broadened participation, access to more diverse approaches/solutions, expanded geographic scale, and leveraging of emerging technology. At US EPA, the Office of Research and Development has worked to embrace these new tools with success in a variety of applications, including high risk, high reward research and challenge prizes focused on technology for high‐throughput screening of chemicals. While individual federal programs have demonstrated that Open Innovation approaches can strengthen the federal R&D portfolio, more systematic and comprehensive study is needed. This work describes a range of Open Innovation in the Federal Government, and lays out key opportunities for further economic, programmatic, and scientific study to maximize their utility and expand their adoption.
Description:
Open Innovation approaches, from crowdsourcing to prize competitions, are being adopted by federal agencies at an accelerating rate over the last ten years. Open Innovation is a problem‐solving approach that seeks to gather and develop external ideas and solutions in addition to internal ones. Advantages of using Open Innovation in federal research and development (R&D) include: expedited timelines, broadened participation, access to more diverse approaches/solutions, expanded geographic scale, and leveraging of emerging technology. At US EPA, the Office of Research and Development has worked to embrace these new tools with success in a variety of applications, including high risk, high reward research and challenge prizes focused on technology for high‐throughput screening of chemicals. While individual federal programs have demonstrated that Open Innovation approaches can strengthen the federal R&D portfolio, more systematic and comprehensive study is needed. This work describes a range of Open Innovation in the Federal Government, and lays out key opportunities for further economic, programmatic, and scientific study to maximize their utility and expand their adoption.