Peter Lee, director of the new Transformational Convergence Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), shares TCTO's mission, research areas and approaches to technology innovation. TCTO aims to develop research programs that enhance the nation's ability to anticipate strategic surprise. It does this by re-establishing basic research programs in a broad range of rapidly emerging computing-enabled technology areas such as social media, synthetic biology, high-performance computing and networking, as well as employing a diverse range of innovation strategies including broad community programs, competitions and challenges, and crowd sourcing.