Measuring and Learning from Success and Innovation in Early Stage Technology Development: A Case Study of NASA's Center Innovation Fund

摘要

This paper summarizes the results of a case study of NASA's Center Innovation Fund (CIF), divided into two parts. The first part analyzes programmatic variables of projects developed through CIF that may serve as indicators of the projects receiving additional, non-CIF funds for continued work, as continued funding is one measure of success. This analysis follows a similar investigation conducted in 2016 of the same program, but with a 30% larger data set due to two more years of data collection. These results focus on collaborations and additional years of funding as key variables for projects continuing through other funding sources. The second part develops new, comprehensive measures of success and innovation for projects, conducts a pilot of applying the metrics to two years of projects, and analyzes the results. These results focus on improving the measures to enable analysis of the CIF portfolio in the future. The goal of this overall effort is to inform changes to CIF program policy to improve the success and innovation of its portfolio. The primary goal of the distribution of the results is to inform members of other technology organizations who may be considering a similar data-driven approach to policy development.