Defense Sciences Office for DARPA | deputy director | program manager | Robert Leheny

Fact is, any technology developed with DARPA funding can leap into the private sector. The agency only funds the research; it doesn't own the technology that's developed. If researchers decide to use their newfound knowledge to jump-start a new company, they have a better-than-average chance of finding private venture capital. So what starts out as a weapon in DARPA's arsenal of ideas often ends up in the marketplace. A few marketing mutations, and - voilà! - it's on commercial shelves, ready for sale.

DON'T GET COMFY
To understand how DARPA works, says Lawrence H. Dubois, PhD, the former Director of the Defense Sciences Office for DARPA, you have to think of it as a private investment house willing to gamble large sums on big gains - a high-risk, high-reward strategy. DARPA doesn't do the work; it finds people who need money to develop their ideas, offers them a research budget, and appoints a program manager to oversee each project.

"I don't make any distinctions between DARPA and innovation," says Robert Leheny, DARPA's deputy director. "DARPA is innovation. That's what we're about. We don't have a fixed budget. We don't sit around dreaming up how we're going to spend this money." The key, he adds, "is finding [researchers with an] innovative idea and taking that idea to management and convincing them that the innovation is worth pursuing."

The agency keeps things simple, so its 125 program managers don't lose sight of what's important. DARPA has no research labs of its own. It operates out of rented office space. Its only real infrastructure is its computer system, and its entire staff is usually, though not always, replaced completely every three to five years.