Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model”

Pierre Azoulay, Erica Fuchs, Anna Goldstein and Michael Kearney

No 24674, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: From its 1958 origin in defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model for research funding has, in the last two decades, spread to other parts of the US federal government with the goal of developing radically new technologies. In this paper, we propose that the key elements of the ARPA model for research funding are: organizational flexibility on an administrative level, and significant authority given to program directors to design programs, select projects and actively manage projects. We identify the ARPA model’s domain as mission-oriented research on nascent S-curves within an inefficient innovation system. Finally, we describe some of the challenges to implementing the ARPA model, and we comment on the role of ARPA in the landscape of research funding approaches.

JEL-codes: I23 O31 O32 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the "ARPA Model" , Pierre Azoulay, Erica Fuchs, Anna P. Goldstein, Michael Kearney. in Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 19 , Lerner and Stern. 2019

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24674.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24674

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24674

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).