Presentation on NASA's Open Innovation and Open Talent Efforts.

1. NASA’s Efforts to Scale Up It’s
Open Innovation & Open Talent
Initiatives
Steve Rader
Program Manager, NASA Tournament Lab/Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation

2. NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation
HQ
ARC
GRC
GSFC
KSC
LaRC
MSFC
JPL
JSC
SSC
AFRC
Across NASA Centers & Programs Public Facing - Worldwide Across US Federal Agencies
Part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)
Prizes, Challenges and Crowdsourcing Program
Provides services across NASA & other Federal Agencies
Virtual Office hosted within Johnson Space Center’s
Center Director’s Office
Provides Access to Open Innovation (OI) Platforms Worldwide
Contracts/Mechanisms
Processes/Support
Education/Outreach
Research
27 Organizations across
15 Agencies To Date
2

3. MISSION
Our mission is to provide maximum value to NASA and Federal
Agency programs and projects by formulating and executing
crowd-powered projects with excellence and efficiency.

4. NASA Open Innovation Services (NOIS) Contract (1)
Center of Excellence
for Collaborative
Innovation
NOIS Contract
2015-2020
9 Contractors
Est 2-3 million
community
members
Open
Innovation
Only
57 Task
Orders Total
$20M of
Value
No
partnerships

5. NASA Open Innovation Services 2 (NOIS2) Contract
NOIS2 initially a
$24,900,000 Multi-
Vendor Contract
with 19 Crowds
Access to 35+
Open Innovation
Firms &
Communities
Representing over
120 Million People
Worldwide

6. CoECI
Open Innovation (OI) Products and Services
Center of Excellence
for Collaborative
Innovation
Ideas
Conceptual
Designs
System
Designs
Demos/
Prototypes
Engineering
Models
Software
Algorithms/
Data Science
Graphics Video
Crowd Prog
Engagement
Technology
Search
Technology
Catalyst
130 120 17 5 28 60 45 50 25 59 98 16
6
Technical Solutions Multimedia
Products and Services Provided by:
Crowd-Based Prize Competitions/Challenges | Freelance Experts/Workers | Micro-Tasking | OI Program Support

7. CoECI’s Support of
Federal Agencies
Provided Support:
Consulting/In Negotiations:

8. NASA-SUPPORTED RESEARCH
Jin Paik
Former Program Director and Senior Researcher,
Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard
Research Focus:
Barriers to wide-scale adoption of open
talent practices in the federal government
Methods:
Qualitative analyses from unstructured
interviews
Alexander Staub
Graduate Student,
Vienna University of
Economics and
Business
Research Focus:
NASA@Work problem owners:
• Inviting more N@W projects
• Improving problem owner
experience and performance
• Understand barriers to
project execution
Methods:
Quantitative and qualitative
analyses of past projects’ data
Mathias Boënne
Assistant Professor of
Entrepreneurship and
Innovation Management,
Utrecht University
Eric von Hippel
Professor of Technological
Innovation,
MIT Sloan School of Management
Research Focus:
Nature and economics of
distributed and free
innovation, innovation in
open user communities
Methods:
Qualitative data analyses of
policy and behavior

10. CoECI Performance Indicators To Date
820+
Projects
75% Show
Cost Savings
47% Average
Cost Savings
$144M+
Estimated
Cost
Savings
95%
Successful
26%
Significant
Advance
32%
Incremental
Advance
37%
Solved

11. THE GROWTH IN
OPEN INNOVATION
AT NASA

12. The Tipping Point
● Up until 2019-2020, CoECI operated in
“sales” mode with significant effort
required to “find” willing problem
owners willing to use open methods.
● Around that period, the number of
projects began to grow organically and
problem owners began approaching
CoECI.
● Since 2021, the CoECI team has
struggled to keep up with the demand.
● Began efforts to scale and reduced
active “sales”.

13. NOIS (1) NOIS2

14. Access to 28 Open Talent (Freelance/Gig Economy) Firms & Communities
Representing almost 90 Million People Worldwide
NASA Open Innovation Services (NOIS) 2 Contract – Freelance Platforms
Micro-Purchase
The Emerging Freelance/Gig-Economy
Center of Excellence
for Collaborative
Innovation
Freelance Labs
Trade names, trademarks, and logos are used in this report for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
1,700,000
10,000
29,000
500,000
70,000,000
20,000
350,000
15,000
1,300
14
150,000
40,000
NOIS2 & NTL Micro-purchase vendors provide
ready access to solutions and services from
expert and specialty skilled talent
Freelancers can be used by
projects to address critical skill
needs or surge capacity.
41,000,000
11,000
5,000,000

15. Open Talent “Freelance Expert” Case Studies
NIST Data Privacy Expert Support (Maven)
○ Maven provided 70-80 hours of support to coach teams to develop full software
solutions. Freelancer selected had 18 years of experience and was a Presidential
Innovation Fellow at NOAA.
NASA ARMD Aeronautics Wicked Problems
Expertise (Maven)
○ 6-month task order with Maven to provide expertise on Wicked Problems/VUCA.
Added additional year of continued consulting/report.
NASA ARMD Future-Scaping our Skies (Tech 7)
○ Two phase task order to find and compile detailed landscaping reports and bring experts
from a multitude of technology areas to provide a better understand of the strategic
needs of ARMD.

16. Open Talent “Freelance Expert” Case Studies
NASA ARMD CAS Future Mapping Team (Maven)
○ Task order to bring in a series of facilitation and collaboration experts to help capture
key insights in in CAS future mapping efforts.
NASA Data Centers Energy Solutions Expertise
(Maven)
○ Task order to use engineering expertise to assess data center infrastructure against
sustainability goals/requirements.
NASA Technical Assessment of New Power
Technology (Yet2)
○ Task order to bring in a small set of domain experts to assess a new technology for
power generation (anonymously).

17. CoECI’s Freelance Challenge Manager
Pilot Open Talent Task Order
1 Year Pilot Project initiated in August (RFTP released 8/1, TO awarded 8/29, Freelancers started 9/25)
Train & use 3 Freelance Challenge Managers to help the team deal with dynamic/surge workload.
NOIS2 Ensemble partnered with Upwork to win the task order and find 3 freelancers.
3 freelancers are now working as CoECI team members
Each is tasked more specifically based on projects mapped to contractual project units.
Included some needed digital skills
Background Checked/NASA Badged
Provisioned onto NASA IT Systems
Treated as team members
Jerlin Michelle Mike

18. Open Talent Projects Initiated To Date
Technical Expert/Specialist
NIST Data Privacy Expert Support (Maven)
NASA ARMD Aeronautics Wicked Problems Expertise
(Maven)
NASA ARMD Future-Scaping our Skies (Tech 7)
NASA ARMD CAS Future Mapping Team (Maven)
NASA Data Centers Energy Solutions Expertise
(Maven)
NASA STMD Technical Assessment of New Power
Technology (Yet2)
NASA CoECI Challenge Managers (Ensemble/Upwork)
Software
NASA ISS Astronaut Smartwatch SW Development
Task (Freelancer)
NASA OCOMM Virtual Guest Time Convertor &
Visualization (Ensemble/TopCoder)
Multimedia
NASA HRP Visual Artist for Life Science Data Archive
(99 Designs)
NASA JSC BDTI Graphic Theme (99 Designs)
NASA HEOMD REALM Project Overview Animated
Video (Freelancer)
NASA HEOMD CHAPEA habitat graphics (Freelancer)
NASA ARMD CAS Graphic Design Expertise
(Freelancer)
Content Development/Marketing
NASA ARMD Aerospace White Paper Tech Writing
and Marketing Freelance Project (Communo)
NASA HEOMD DTN ION Training Course
Development Task (Freelancer)
NASA ARMD CAS Transcription Capability
(Freelancer)

19. Open Talent Projects
NASA Human Capital is beginning to route
programs to CoECI’s NOIS2 contract when
traditional hiring mechanisms/timelines don’t
support program needs.

20. Core Team
Orchestrating the outreach, training,
procurement and execution of open
innovation/talent across NASA and Fed Gov’t
using agile (includes open talent), digitally
enabled workforce and tools.
<NASA Public Curated Community>
Considering a curated public
community using a platform to
engage the public for maximum
benefit to NASA and the public.
Fully Digital Data/Workflow Systems
Maximum digital integration to
enable automated/efficient
workflow and information insight
(metrics collection and analysis).
Open Innovation/Talent Ecosystem
Contractual structure that provides
low-friction access to a global ecosystem
of open innovation and open talent
contractors-platforms-communities.
Trained NASA Workforce
Via years of Open Innovation Academy
trained cohorts, NASA workforce is trained
on how to identify and use (or connect to
someone who can help) open methods
when best suited to add value.
NASA Spark as Workforce Hub
Expanded use of the NASA Spark
platform/community to facilitate
collaboration and innovation across
the enterprise.
NASA’s CoECI Target Future State
Center of Excellence
for Collaborative
Innovation

21. Long Term Scaling Initiatives
Open Talent
Complete Pilot via NOIS2 (and probably
NOIS3)
Work with NASA Human Capital on
enterprise offering as industry
matures.
NASA Contractor Base
Work with Contractor Base & with
Procurement (to include Open
Innovation & Open Talent
requirements in support contracts)
Note that several contractors have
already started running challenges &
working open talent strategies.
NASA Open Innovation Academy
Cadres of 3-5 starting 1 year training program (½ time) every 6
months (so 10/year once up and running).
Graduates will become Ambassadors in organizations around the
agency tasked with identifying problems that are best solved
with OI/OT and facilitating execution of those projects using
CoECI contracts/tools.
CoECI will work to make OI/OT an enterprise offering.
Continue to Build Ecosystems
NOISx contractors are encouraged to partner on projects where
additional/emerging capabilities are beneficial.
Micro-purchase still provides a low-barrier way to engage and try
out new platforms/services.

22. Questions?
http://nasa.gov/get-involved/
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