By: Richard Atta

Overall Rating: ⭐️

“DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise to the US, and also to create technological surprise for our enemies.”

“DARPA lacks a traditional corporate vision, which identifies a set of organizational values and direction for the enterprise. Since its inception in 1958, the agency has not defined its long term goals, aspirations, and values at the organizational level.”

I was surprised to learn DARPA only funds external research, and conducts no actual research of its own. Further, it provides fairly broad mandate to individuals to prosecute their beliefs through research.

PM Agency

“The best DARPA program managers have always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals.”

DARPA employs a revolving set of Project Managers - people with deep technical expertise on a given subject matter - and gives them a budget and very wide range to pursue grants. They are given sizeable budget and about 3-5 years to pursue their interests, after which they usually leave. This allows for constant rejuvenation of new talent and interest areas for PMs. DARPA uses a “challenge based” model, where a program manager issues a general area of interest, and then finds a portfolio of projects in that category.

Some of the questions that a DARPA PM asks a researcher prior to financing:

• What are you trying to do? Explain it in as little jargon as possible.
• How is it done today?
• What’s new with your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
• What are the risks and payoffs?
• How much will it cost?
• How long will it take?
• What are the midterm and final exam results?

There are obvious parallels here to venture financing - the PM discretion, the success of sticking to external teams to finance, the portfolio approach, etc.