Darpa: Delivering Disruption

What does DARPA in addition to Facebook bring inward common?
Move fast in addition to interruption things!

A duet weeks agone Stefanie Tompkins, DARPA acting deputy director, visited University at Buffalo to hit a utter in addition to encounter researchers. She talked most DARPA in addition to funding opportunities at DARPA. I had the mental prototype of DARPA every bit a ho-hum moving, difficult to maneuver aircraft carrier, simply her utter painted a really dissimilar picture, in addition to partially changed my perception of DARPA.

DARPA, thus ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), was created inward 1958 every bit a response to Sputnik 1. DARPA's mission is to foreclose strategic surprise, avoid around other Sputnik moment. And every bit yous already know, the best trend to predict futurity is to invent it. So DARPA is perpetually pushing the envelope to invent the adjacent strategic surprise in addition to disruptive technology itself.

DARPA has a large give away of successes nether its belt. Internet has its roots inward ARPANET.  GPS grew out of basic inquiry on atomic clocks funded past times DARPA. DARPA is every bit good credited amongst several inventions inward stealth, radar arrays, uavs, ir nighttime vision, microelectronics, in addition to materials sciences. DARPA funded several high comport on grand challenges on autonomous vehicles starting dorsum inward 2004, which helped kicking get-go todays self-driving cars technologies. DARPA every bit good funded other grand challenges, including the network challenge (2009), in addition to cyber grand challenge (2016).

To crusade for disruption in addition to off-scale impact, DARPA recruits plan managers from universities (20% of PMs) in addition to industry. The plan managers rotate quickly, they serve 3-5 years. Within that time, they purpose the budget allocated to them to create/fund DARPA programs on high comport on inquiry in addition to development. DARPA programs may hit from $10,000,000 to $400,000,000 over 2 to v years.

DARPA has half dozen technical offices.


Heilmeier questions bring a pregnant house DARPA culture. Even the plan managers require to answer these questions when creating novel programs.

Another component of DARPA civilisation is the infamous quadchart. "Quadcharts which cram inward figures, assertions, in addition to required logos/branding/acronyms are a proud in addition to sacred tradition" (RT @tedherman).

While Stefanie's presentation managed to convince me that DARPA is an agile institution, the quadcharts construct me a skeptic :-)

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