"Building a New Foundation for Innovation"
Dr. Joseph Bordogna
Deputy Director
Chief Operating Officer
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Remarks to the NSF Workshop
Partnerships: Building a New Foundation for Innovation
June 18, 2001
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[Title slide]
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Good morning to everyone. On behalf of the National
Science Foundation, I'm delighted to welcome you as
partners. I'm especially pleased to be here today
with such a diverse and innovative group.
I'm grateful to all of you - our PFI grantees and special
guests - for your interest and participation in this
workshop. I know you bring an eclectic perspective,
and that's just what we need to add value to our PFI
investment.
[Innovators break
all the rules]
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A few years ago, The Economist magazine did a study
of innovation throughout the world. In a sidebar to
one segment there was a caption that read, "Innovators
break all the rules. Trust them."
That's exactly what we have done. Let me explain.
When we first set about designing the PFI program,
we had many hours of lively debate about how it should
be structured. What guidelines should we develop for
prospective grantees? What parameters should we require
of the partnerships?
We all knew that PFI would best serve its purpose if
it attracted a wide variety of institutions, partnerships,
and proposed experiments in innovation. In the end,
we decided to place very few restrictions in the proposal
description. We wanted to provide the maximum freedom
possible for grantees to be innovative about innovation.
As it turns out, we made the right choice. Like so
many choices viewed retrospectively, it now seems
like the only one we could have made.
The quality and creativity of the proposals we received
went beyond our expectations. Each project has a unique
flavor that can come only through local knowledge
and specific experience, applied to a concrete challenge.
[Map of location
of Partnership grant recipients]
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This slide, which shows the location of the first 24
PFI grant recipients, is just a proxy for the diversity
and creativity of the Partnerships initiatives that
have been launched. I won't describe these programs.
I know you'll hear more about them over the course
of the meeting.
In other words, we learned from the PFI proposals.
And we'll learn even more from all of you today as
we explore how each of you has turned ideas into realities.
You've broken the mold and moved outside of traditional
ways of thinking - outside the box, so to speak.
We fully expect that your pioneering efforts will lead
a new generation of innovators. You will "break the
rules" with new insight and new action.
Our PFI grantees were chosen for the Partnerships program
because they saw new ways to redesign old patterns
to meet the challenges of today. Although our national
system of innovation is the finest in the world, the
world is rapidly changing and we must keep pace with
those changes.
I'd like to talk about some of those changes and what
they imply about the role of partnerships and innovation
in the future. But first, I'd also like to tell you
how NSF came to the Partnerships program and what
it means for us.
I've taken the title of my remarks from the name of
this workshop: Building a New Foundation for Innovation.
If you haven't already noticed, that's a double entendre
[on-tahn'-dra] - a phrase with two meanings. It refers
to what you are accomplishing in laying the groundwork
for a 21st century innovation system. But
in the context of NSF, it also can be taken to mean
"Building a new (National Science) Foundation for
Innovation.
Of course, innovation isn't entirely new at NSF! It's
part of our vision, and the Partnerships for Innovation
program is a flagship in that effort. Let me explain.
[NSF Vision Statement]
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The NSF vision statement is direct and crisp: enabling
the nation's future through discovery, learning, and
innovation. Not too long ago you would not have seen
the word innovation in an NSF vision statement. Now
it's there together with discovery and learning.
[Innovation system
slide]
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We now realize that not only can scientific research
drive technological innovation, but that it can also
happen the other way around. In the larger sense,
innovation depends upon a mutual, synergistic set
of interactions that includes not only science, engineering
and technology, but social, political and economic
interactions as well.
Our gathering today illustrates this phenomenon. If
you turn around in your seat, you might encounter
a physicist, the head of an economic development agency,
a venture capitalist, a state science advisor, an
educator, an electrical engineer, or a corporate officer.
I'm not sure if we have any reporters or politicians,
but we're working on them!
In a more serious vein, our quest in the 21st
Century is becoming a common one. We need new arrangements
that foster the kind of integration that supports
innovation, and the social and economic well being
it enables.
[NSF Outcome Goals]
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At NSF, we've developed a set of goals to complement
our vision, a sharply focused set on which we can
concentrate our investments, and by which we can be
held accountable. We call these People, Ideas, and
Tools.
You'll notice that People are at the top of the list.
That's intentional. NSF is as much about building
a world-class workforce as it is about discovery.
Although we continually break new ground with the
research we support, we need people to carry
forward the continual process of discovery and innovation.
I want to emphasize this point. At NSF, we're putting
a renewed focus on preparing the science, engineering
and technology workforce needed for the 21st
Century. Now that knowledge is the most sought after
prize in the world, knowledge workers - scientists,
mathematicians, engineers, and educators - are at
the center of our vision.
Of course, Ideas, the new knowledge that is powering
innovation and productivity in our economy today,
will always be central to everything NSF does. And,
finally, we need sophisticated Tools to advance the
frontiers in nearly every field.
[NSF Core Strategies]
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We've adopted three core strategies to accomplish these
goals. These are: develop intellectual capital, integrate
research and education, and promote partnerships.
This is where the rubber meets the road. It's where
we design the solutions to get the job done effectively.
That we do so is an imperative not a luxury.
[21st Century World]
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The world of the 21st century is very different
from the world of only 10 or 15 years ago. Today,
advances in science and engineering and technological
change are the driving forces of the economy. We recognize
that the capacity to create and use new knowledge
is the key to our future prosperity.
Complexity and rapid change will shape the 21st
century world. In the last ten years, the winds of
change have literally swept across our institutions.
They have reshaped the once familiar landscape of
the economy and have forced us to clear new paths
in business, in research, in science and engineering,
and in education.
These changes have occurred at a speed that has left
many of our research programs in the dust. Whether
we welcome it or not, the pace of change is unlikely
to lessen anytime soon. We haven't seen the end of
the information revolution, and we're only beginning
to feel the impact of biotechnology in our everyday
lives. New technologies are already visible on the
horizon. Nanotechnology, for example, is likely to
create reverberations that many believe will make
the information revolution seem insignificant.
If rapid change is now ubiquitous, then we need to
enable a workforce that is flexible and agile in adapting
to change.
And if innovation is at the heart of progress, then
we need to understand the skills that foster the capacity
for risk taking, for imagination, and a tolerance
for unfamiliar and uncertain territory. That in turn
will mean that our institutions must evolve to engender
these skills.
[Heinz Pagels quote]
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I like this quote from Heinz Pagels' [Paw-gels] book
Perfect Symmetry, because it captures the spirit
of what continuous learning and innovation is about.
"The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction,
not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the
attribute of an explorer."
We're all explorers here, and we all know that these
skills reside throughout society - in academe, in
business, in government.
We also know that they exist throughout the world.
Peter Drucker recognized this some years ago and pointed
out the implications. He said, "the only comparative
advantage of the developed countries is in the supply
of knowledge workers.......this means continual, systematic
work on the productivity of knowledge and knowledge
workers, which is still neglected and abysmally low."
[Drucker slide
on productivity]
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Enter innovation, center stage. Where we once thought
of productivity in terms of work per laborer, we now
increasingly must think of the productivity of knowledge
and knowledge workers. That's what innovation is about.
Partnerships are the other side of the same coin.
Good partnerships always present new challenges. We
often run into hurdles that we haven't anticipated.
One of these is simply the differences that partners
bring to the table - differences in perspective, in
experience, in institutional culture, and in goals.
You may have heard this story about a Texas rancher
and a Vermont farmer that illustrates my point. The
Texas rancher was visiting Vermont and stopped along
a rural road to talk with a local farmer. "Just how
big is your spread?" he asked the Vermonter.
"Well, it goes up to that elm tree you see ahead of
us, along that fence line yonder, and then back along
that stream."
"Shoot," said the Texas rancher. "I can get in my truck
and drive all day long and still not reach
the end of my property."
"Yeh-up," replied the Vermont farmer, "I once had a
truck like that myself."
Partnerships introduce an added level of complexity
to any undertaking. This is true because the task
is new and none of the partners has experience in
accomplishing it.
If partnerships present all these challenges, what
are they good for?
Something new happens in the process of integrating
the different intellectual skills, experience, and
perspectives of the partners. A singular or separate
dynamic emerges from the interaction. You could say
that the whole is greater than the sum of the partners!
I mentioned earlier that we need to focus on integrating
research and education. Linking support for research
with training the next generation of scientists and
engineers has been the intent of NSF from the start.
It's also a powerful way to ensure that the two-way
road between the academic research laboratory and
the larger world stays open and engaged. That's one
place where we welcome heavy traffic!
The borders between discovery, learning, and innovation
are becoming less rigid. Increasingly, scientists
and engineers are working across many different disciplines
and fields and in different sectors to make the connections
that lead to deeper insights and more creative solutions,
and to getting things done. Our workforce of the future
will need this capacity to integrate knowledge in
new ways. We're forming partnerships, and we'll need
to partner even more.
I like the way Peter Senge [Sen-ghee] of MIT describes
this phenomenon in terms of learning organizations.
[Senge quote]
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"A learning organization is a group of people who are
continually enhancing their capabilities to create
what they want to create."
It's the capacity to discover, to learn, and
to innovate that can weather the storms of change.
Senge's characterization also implies intention or
design - the shared meaning and goals that are both
the motivation for forming partnerships and for sustaining
them.
I think of us here today as just such a creative group.
We're setting out together to explore the terrain
of innovation. And if we break a few rules in the
process, so much the better!
Let me conclude by summing up the journey on which
we're embarking together.
[Where Discoveries
Begin]
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The National Science Foundation aims at nothing less
than U.S. world leadership in science, engineering,
and technology. Our task has been to strengthen the
nation's science and engineering in order to brighten
our economic and social future - even though we don't
know precisely what that future will be.
With the community's peer advice, we do this by choosing
the most capable people with the most insightful ideas.
That's you! Through you and with you, we provide the
risky opportunity to advance our understanding in
a new direction, accelerate its pace and, increasingly,
help it build bridges to new territory.
The Partnerships for Innovation program fits this last
description to a tee. We've reached out to find the
capable people with the best ideas to begin the extraordinary
process of transforming our innovation system to meet
the needs of the 21st Century.
That's precisely where you come in. So I'll
leave you with these thoughts. We're anxious to learn
from you and gain your insights.
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