The Innovation Landscape within a Large Government Agency: Promising Practices from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration

摘要

The NASA Mission is to "drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of Earth. NASA's complementary Vision is to "reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind" (NASA Strategic Plan).' NASA's future success will be determined largely by the investment and innovations made today in scientific research, technology and our workforce. To achieve mission success through the highest standards in engineering, research, operations and management, NASA is committed to nurturing an organizational culture of innovation within our workforce. Innovation is the application of a novel approach that provides improved outcomes or enables new outcomes to create value for people. Innovation as defined here, is broadly applied to technological, scientific, engineering, educational, outreach and organizational activities across NASA. This paper presents a NASA Innovation Landscape that builds on a framework proposed by Pisano (2015) and other researchers. The framework maps the Innovation landscape into four quadrants, depending on whether the innovation pursues new approaches in the area of technology or organizational processes. This paper adapts the framework to a large, public sector agency and explores Continuous, Disruptive, Revolutionary and Transformative innovations. Continuous innovation builds on existing technological capabilities and fits within the existing organizational model. Disruptive innovation requires organizational change rather than a breakthrough in technology, as proposed by Christensen. Revolutionary innovation is the counterpoint to disruptive innovation, requiring a technological breakthrough within the existing organization. Transformative innovation combines technological and organizational disruptbns. The discussion provides examples of innovative activities from NASA that represent the four quadrants of the Innovation Landscape. The closing explores how leaders can use the concepts from the Innovation Landscape as a communication tool to foster an innovation culture within the workforce of a large government agency.