Managing Innovative Ideas for Problems of National Importance
Abstract
Organizations use innovation programs to develop new products and services for their customers. In MITRE's case, our customers are government agencies that sponsor the seven federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) that MITRE operates. Our sponsors depend on MITRE to provide innovative solutions to some of our nations most critical challenges in defense and intelligence, aviation, system modernization, homeland security, cybersecurity, and healthcare. We tackle many of these challenges through the MITRE Innovation Program (MIP), our independent research and development (R and D) program, which supports researchers from across the MITRE-operated FFRDCs. Our researchers look at the government's problems in fundamentally new ways, and apply advanced and emerging technologies to innovative solutions. The Patient Toolkit, an iPad application, is an example of a new healthcare idea that progressed through the MIP to a licensable product administered by our Technology Transfer Office. Idea generation and portfolio management are keys to the success of our R and D program. We use an online idea management system, called the Idea Market, to select and develop research proposals that reflect the needs of our sponsors. The ideas for projects come from all over the company and represent MITRE's wide range of expertise. Any employee can submit an idea to the Idea Market, which is just the beginning of the process. Using the online Idea Market, other staff members can easily give feedback on the ideas by adding technical ability or sharing information about specific sponsors' problems that could be solved through R and D. This collaboration functionality improves and refines ideas throughout the review process.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1107961
Entities
People
- Marcie Zaharee
- Michal Cenkl
Organizations
- MITRE Corporation