Jul 16, 2021
Dr. Tony Tether was the director of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, DARPA, from 2001 till his retirement in
2009.
DARPA is widely known for being the principle agency in DoD for
research and development. DARPA is charged with investing in
projects that aim for high-payoff. They fund innovative ideas,
develop solutions, provide demonstrations of concepts and systems
and take any other prudent action required to move the right ideas
from concept to reality.
In this OODAcast we examine some of Dr. Tether’s formative
experiences, including a very unique job he held while awaiting
entry to Stanford. He was a door to door salesman and while doing
that learned the importance of quickly assessing challenges that
were not being addressed and then forming an ability to express
what needs to be done and how to do it quickly. As we hear in the
discussion, this type of approach, very consistent with the famous
“Heilmeier Catechism”, ended up producing a wide range of DARPA
breakthroughs, including one that is now in every cell phone in the
globe (next time you use your cell phone’s mapping and location
services, remember to thank the Fuller Brush company!).
Dr. Tether also walks us through a brief history of DARPA and
dives deeper into the questions Heilmeier is so famous for
articulating as a requirement before funding advanced
capabilities:
- What is the problem you want to solve? Articulate your
objectives using absolutely no jargon. - How is it done today, and what are the limits of current
practice? - What’s new in your approach and why do you think it will be
successful? - Who cares? If you’re successful, what difference will it
make?(transition) - What are the risks and the payoffs?
- How much will it cost?
- How long will it take?
- What are the midterm and final “exams” (go/no go criteria)to
check for success?
Other topics we discussed with Dr. Tether include:
- Recent proposals to double the funding of DARPA and why that
may be a bad idea - Concepts around cybersecurity and mitigating risks to
enterprises and the nation of intellectual property theft - Leadership in an age of converging technology
Slides Dr. Tether Reviewed in this OODAcast are at this link:
Dr. Tether Presentation
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