DARPA shows mission-driven research is empirically successful and drives innovation

People often look to DARPA as a way to consider organizational innovation inside the public sector. DARPA – the key investor in the internet as well as innovations like Siri – has always been mission-driven and known for its ability to attract top talent even without paying the kinds of salaries offered, for example, by the Singapore government (up to $1 million for department heads), so attraction to the project means more than money. This mission mystique is determined by a strong sense of purpose, such as to win a war or implement a Green New Deal. It is also determined by the ability to invest, lead and create with confidence, words usually applied only to business leaders. Key to DARPA’s model has been the explicit recognition that internal ways of working must be flexible and adaptive.

DARPA is the perfect example of why it is wrong to think that government is simply there to de-risk private risk-takers. DARPA took enormous risks in funding the invention of the internet – and it did so with a problem in mind: so that satellites could communicate. Similarly, the US Navy funded the invention of GPS in an effort to target missiles better. The point is: to think in a mission-oriented way is revolutionary because it requires rethinking the role of government in the economy, putting purpose first and solving problems that are important to citizens. It means transforming government from being merely an ‘enabler’ or even a ‘stifler’ of innovation to becoming the engine of innovation. Usually this type of flexibility and outcomes orientation only occurs in wartime, when military organizations are given autonomy from more bureaucratic branches of government. And yet DARPA works in peacetime, too. Recently, for example, DARPA funded early R&D for two pharmaceutical companies, Moderna Inc. and Inovio Pharmaceutical Inc., to create RNA and DNA vaccines – technologies that many scientists and investors considered speculative and high-risk. However, DARPA believed that nucleic-acid-based vaccines could be developed much faster than conventional technologies, and their bet paid off. In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Moderna’s RNA vaccine became the first COVID-19 vaccine to be administered in a Phase I trial, and Inovio’s DNA-based vaccine was on track to start a Phase I trial shortly thereafter. Pursuing high-risk, high-reward technologies is routine for DARPA, which continually creates, manufactures and distributes prophylactics within sixty days of identifying a new viral pathogen.