Laura’s Winning Ideas

Dennis McDonald discussed research to enhance cognitive performance (your brain on steroids) and wonders whether collaboration might be a faster way to reach new discoveries here.

If you work for government clients, you may find RFPs suggesting collaboration. Here’s where they are going with this request:

Since the 1990’s the National Science Foundation (NSF – most government research grants come from this agency) and the National Institute of Health (NIH – most government health research grants come from this agency) both began encouraging collaboration and backing it up with serious money.

They realized that continuing to award grants to researchers who shared the same specialty was not achieving break-through discoveries. When you attack a problem in the same way each time, repetitive attacks yield little ground. But when a completely different approach is tried, some amazing discoveries can happen.

So, NIH began requiring that research teams be cross pollinated with other academic specialties. NSF made special awards for “collaborative” teams. Academic researchers were not previously rewarded for mixing with folks outside their realm, and so the transition will be a hard one for academia. In fact, most academic researchers struggle to achieve tenure unless they closet themselves with a very small circle of researchers in their specialty.

However, inventive solution providers in the private sector have more incentive to try out new approaches and no repercussions from colluding with different specialists. Therefore, it is no surprise that many of the most surprising solutions are coming from the private sector, even though we spend oodles on publicly funded research.

How will this help you win work?

By now, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – most defense research grants come from this agency) has informed the DoD agencies of the need for collaboration when faced with projects requiring strong problem solving skills. This will show up in RFP requirements that might read a bit mystically. What they are after is a demonstration that you understand how to collaborate and know the specific benefits of collaboration.

This will trickle down to Transportation and other procuring agencies, if it hasn’t already.

What can you do now to be ready?

In your project summary database, watch for examples of collaboration and highlight them on major projects. Find examples of collaboration among educational specialties. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are looking for “diversity” of demography. 

If you maintain a storytelling database, add “collaboration” to the list of stories you seek.