Intelligent Organisation Profile: NASA

Introduction

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has embraced open innovation to tackle complex challenges in space exploration and technology development. By engaging external collaborators, including the public, academia, and industry, NASA leverages diverse perspectives to drive innovation and achieve mission objectives.

Intelligent approach

• Prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing: NASA's open innovation strategy includes problem-focused challenges, prize competitions, data hackathons, and citizen science projects. These initiatives invite the public to contribute skills, ideas, and time to support NASA projects, fostering a collaborative environment for innovation.

• NASA Tournament Lab (NTL): The NTL collaborates with platforms like Topcoder to run data-science challenges targeting improvements in areas such as computer vision algorithms for the Robonaut 2 humanoid robot and optimization of the International Space Station's solar arrays. This approach harnesses the collective expertise of a global community to solve technical problems.

• Centennial Challenges Programme: This program offers incentive prizes to generate innovative solutions from diverse sources in academia, industry, and the public. By focusing on specific technical challenges, NASA encourages the development of novel technologies that can advance space exploration.

• International space apps challenge: As the largest global annual hackathon, this event provides an opportunity for participants to utilize NASA's open data to address real-world problems on Earth and in space. It fosters interest in Earth and space science, technology, and exploration, encouraging the growth and diversity of the next generation of problem solvers.

Benefits of This Approach

• Accelerated problem solving: Open innovation allows NASA to tap into a vast pool of external expertise, leading to faster development of solutions to complex challenges.

• Cost-effective development: By leveraging external contributions, NASA can achieve technological advancements without bearing the full costs associated with traditional research and development methods.

• Enhanced public engagement: Involving the public in NASA's missions fosters a sense of shared purpose and inspires interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

• Diverse perspectives: Open innovation brings together individuals with varied backgrounds and expertise, leading to more creative and robust solutions.NASA.

  
  

NASA's commitment to outcome-driven open innovation exemplifies how a large organization can effectively harness external ideas and expertise to achieve strategic goals, drive technological advancement, and engage with the global community.