This paper explores the potential for a Government technology innovation network where technologies are shared across US Agencies and with the public as a central way to innovate around Government technologies. The NASA Innovation Ecosystem supports discovery, collaboration, and ideation around NASA current and future technology. Innovate.NASA (www.innovate.nasa.gov) is the virtual platform in the Ecosystem for citizen scientists to learn about NASA technology, collaborate to rethink these inventions, and shape the discussion around future innovation. The purpose is to strengthen NASA's technology capabilities through actively exposing NASA developed technology to external innovators for open innovation. Innovate.NASA shares out NASA research and inventions on its website, and provides inspiration and insights on innovation via its social media accounts. Participants of Innovate.NASA contribute questions and ideas to identify new uses and reuses for NASA technology, and engage in discussion to promote innovation. Innovate.NASA encompasses a broad community of scientists, technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs. This open, interactive, collaborative platform brings together technologists and innovators to drive innovation through: Leveraging and cultivating existing relationships between subject matter experts regardless of field; Identifying opportunities for re-use across technologies beyond original functional design or intent; Connecting scientists and technologists together that are agnostic of geography, function or organization; Exposing technology to the general public to allow for open innovation and crowdsourcing of ideas. In support of NASA missions the Innovation Ecosystem involves scientists and technologists dynamically to actively submit, discuss and collaborate on new ideas and innovative uses of technology. What makes this type of interaction unique to NASA? Very little. Most government agencies have technology and as good stewards of taxpayer funding they are looking to use, license, and re-use the technology. In this tight fiscal environment a collaborative approach provides additional benefits in the form of agency re-use. Think of this benefit as the "technology garage." At home when finances are tight, instead of running off to the hardware store to purchase a new part, you may check in the garage first to see if you have an existing part that could be modified to fit your needs and solve your problem. Given the same logic, in a tight fiscal environment rather than funding new technology development a project may find it useful to look into existing technology in the agency "garage" to see if existing solutions can be modified to fit the project needs. This type of solution is not just limited to NASA technology - in fact it is greatly enhanced by allowing multiple agencies to have access to all of the other Government agency technology garages. Imagine instead of wandering into your garage and making due with the parts you find, that you had access to all of the garages in your neighborhood! The possibilities become exponentially larger that you will not only find a part that could work but you can find other perspectives on the problem and even a potential collaborator to help you fix the problem. NASA's holistic approach to foster innovation encompasses several NASA-wide movements to strategically prioritize research and development, promote collaboration, increase transparency, and engage the public. Innovate.NASA is one of the initiatives built to transform NASA's internal innovation ecosystem into a cross-sector, multi-industry, international, open one. NASA recognizes that this capability is applicable to many Government agencies and is planning to host this collaborative Government technology innovation platform. Ultimately through multi Agency participation each does its part to support an environment where innovation thrives and ideas translate into impact for future Government missions, in
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