DARPA Innovation Model | Bullaki Science Podcast Clips with Timothy Grayson (2/11)
What’s a DARPA-hard problem? Why do you need an organization like DARPA to tackle it? Some of the reasons why you shouldn’t hire bozos. Flat vs tall organization structure. Leadership skills and how to be a leader in a top R&D organization.
In the second part of this Bullaki Science Podcast, the director of the Strategic Technology Office (STO) at DARPA, Dr. Timothy Grayson, talks about the DARPA innovation model.
This is the second part of our conversation with Timothy Grayson. We’ll be releasing this podcast in episodes every one or two days. If you wish to access the full podcast immediately please join us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bullaki), otherwise subscribe and turn on the notification and you’ll know when the other episodes will be available.
As the director of the Strategic Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA), Timothy leads the office in development of breakthrough technologies to enable war fighters to field, operate, and adapt distributed, joint, multi-domain combat capabilities at continuous speed. He is also founder and president of Fortitude Mission Research LLC and spent several years as a senior intelligence officer with the CIA. Here he illustrates the concept of Mosaic Warfare, in which individual warfighting platforms, just like ceramic tiles in a mosaic, are placed together to make a larger picture. This philosophy can be applied to tackle a variety of human challenges including natural disasters, disruption of supply chains, climate change, pandemics, etc. He also discusses why super AI won’t represent an existential threat in the foreseeable future, but rather an opportunity for an effective division of labour between humans and machines (or human-machine symbiosis).
In the second part of our conversation with Timothy Grayson he talks about:
00:00 DARPA-hard problem
08:56 No Bozos policy
11:21 Tall vs Flat
CONNECT:
- Subscribe to this YouTube channel
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuele-lilliu/
- Website: www.bullaki.com
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bullaki
#bullaki #science #podcast #future
***
SL. Yeah, that’s why I was going to ask you, how important is that leaders know and understand what’s happening in the labs, because sometimes you have managers, people coming from business environments or managerial careers that have no idea about the technical sides, they don’t have any [technical/scientific] background. I mean, the biggest example, probably is Elon Musk, right? He knows every single thing... probably... I’d imagine that’s correct… and that’s how he runs successfully his multiple companies. So how important is this aspect for you?
TG. It’s very important, but it takes a certain breed of a researcher. You have to have been technical [when] coming in. Interestingly enough, we don’t have any firm requirements or credentials. While the majority of people at DARPA have PhDs in a technical field, that’s not a hard mandate. We do look for people who are technically accomplished, who have actually done their own research. The model I like to say, and even this is not hard and fast, we like to say that you’ve got to be a mile deep in some technical area, just so you have that, that experience-based, and you know what it’s like to do research. But you also have to be inch deep, at least, across a very wide range. That’s I think, one thing that differentiates a DARPA program manager from a lot of other very accomplished researchers. You could have someone who is one of the world leading researchers for their academic areas, and they work in it their entire career but you ask that person to step outside that lane, and they get very uncomfortable. DARPA Program Managers (PMs) have to also be very fast studies.
I think that may be the biggest characteristic, and I’ve never really thought about this, but it’s academic curiosity. It’s someone who is already proven that they can go deep, that they’ve got the technical chops, but then it’s also augmented by that technical curiosity. Oh, a new challenge comes up, if someone presents them a new idea, I can be a quick study and I’m not going to be the expert who’s going to go toe to toe doing the research. But like you said with Elon Musk, he’s not building SpaceX rockets or he’s not building and designing batteries himself. But he’s a quick enough study that he can ask the right questions and make informed decisions. That’s kind of the model that we look at for our program managers.
SL. What kind of organizational structure do you have there? Is it flat or is it tall? Is the management command-oriented or is it flat?
TG. It’s very flat. To my point about, we don’t have DARPA labs, it pretty much begins and ends with the program managers. I mentioned we’ve got these six technical offices. They’re populated by program managers, I don’t know the exact number off the top my head, but somewhere around 100 or so program managers.
What’s a DARPA-hard problem? Why do you need an organization like DARPA to tackle it? Some of the reasons why you shouldn’t hire bozos. Flat vs tall organization structure. Leadership skills and how to be a leader in a top R&D organization.
In the second part of this Bullaki Science Podcast, the director of the Strategic Technology Office (STO) at DARPA, Dr. Timothy Grayson, talks about the DARPA innovation model.
This is the second part of our conversation with Timothy Grayson. We’ll be releasing this podcast in episodes every one or two days. If you wish to access the full podcast immediately please join us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bullaki), otherwise subscribe and turn on the notification and you’ll know when the other episodes will be available.
As the director of the Strategic Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA), Timothy leads the office in development of breakthrough technologies to enable war fighters to field, operate, and adapt distributed, joint, multi-domain combat capabilities at continuous speed. He is also founder and president of Fortitude Mission Research LLC and spent several years as a senior intelligence officer with the CIA. Here he illustrates the concept of Mosaic Warfare, in which individual warfighting platforms, just like ceramic tiles in a mosaic, are placed together to make a larger picture. This philosophy can be applied to tackle a variety of human challenges including natural disasters, disruption of supply chains, climate change, pandemics, etc. He also discusses why super AI won’t represent an existential threat in the foreseeable future, but rather an opportunity for an effective division of labour between humans and machines (or human-machine symbiosis).
In the second part of our conversation with Timothy Grayson he talks about:
00:00 DARPA-hard problem
08:56 No Bozos policy
11:21 Tall vs Flat
CONNECT:
– Subscribe to this YouTube channel
– LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuele-lilliu/
– Website: www.bullaki.com
– Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bullaki
#bullaki #science #podcast #future
***
SL. Yeah, that’s why I was going to ask you, how important is that leaders know and understand what’s happening in the labs, because sometimes you have managers, people coming from business environments or managerial careers that have no idea about the technical sides, they don’t have any [technical/scientific] background. I mean, the biggest example, probably is Elon Musk, right? He knows every single thing… probably… I’d imagine that’s correct… and that’s how he runs successfully his multiple companies. So how important is this aspect for you?
TG. It’s very important, but it takes a certain breed of a researcher. You have to have been technical [when] coming in. Interestingly enough, we don’t have any firm requirements or credentials. While the majority of people at DARPA have PhDs in a technical field, that’s not a hard mandate. We do look for people who are technically accomplished, who have actually done their own research. The model I like to say, and even this is not hard and fast, we like to say that you’ve got to be a mile deep in some technical area, just so you have that, that experience-based, and you know what it’s like to do research. But you also have to be inch deep, at least, across a very wide range. That’s I think, one thing that differentiates a DARPA program manager from a lot of other very accomplished researchers. You could have someone who is one of the world leading researchers for their academic areas, and they work in it their entire career but you ask that person to step outside that lane, and they get very uncomfortable. DARPA Program Managers (PMs) have to also be very fast studies.
I think that may be the biggest characteristic, and I’ve never really thought about this, but it’s academic curiosity. It’s someone who is already proven that they can go deep, that they’ve got the technical chops, but then it’s also augmented by that technical curiosity. Oh, a new challenge comes up, if someone presents them a new idea, I can be a quick study and I’m not going to be the expert who’s going to go toe to toe doing the research. But like you said with Elon Musk, he’s not building SpaceX rockets or he’s not building and designing batteries himself. But he’s a quick enough study that he can ask the right questions and make informed decisions. That’s kind of the model that we look at for our program managers.
SL. What kind of organizational structure do you have there? Is it flat or is it tall? Is the management command-oriented or is it flat?
TG. It’s very flat. To my point about, we don’t have DARPA labs, it pretty much begins and ends with the program managers. I mentioned we’ve got these six technical offices. They’re populated by program managers, I don’t know the exact number off the top my head, but somewhere around 100 or so program managers.
