基金组织，而不是项目：与独立研究组织的投资组合使美国的创新生态系统多样化
Summary
Dominant research-funding paradigms constrain the outputs of America’s innovation systems. Federal research-funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) operate largely through milestone-scoped grants那无法激励high-risk research, impose highly burdensome reporting requirements, and are closely managed by the government. Philanthropically-funded research organizations are an excellent mechanism to experiment with different research management approaches. However, they are perennially underfunded and rarely have a path to long-term sustainability.
一个带有两个部分的程序可以解决此问题：
首先，NSF的新技术，创新和合作伙伴关系（TIP）局应该试行“组织，而不是项目”计划，其中慈善赠款基金是独立研究组织的投资组合，而不是为特定的研究计划提供资金。与慈善事业合作将利用美国捐助者的多样性来确定具有不同限制的研究组织的组合（因此有可能创造异常结果）。为了产生重大影响，该试点资金机会应每年为10年以1亿美元的价格提供资金。
其次，NSF借鉴了Kanjun Qiu和Michael Nielsen的想法，每年应拨出1亿美元，以赞助独立的研究组织，这些组织在很长一段时间内具有令人印象深刻的记录。对“获得”成功组织的这种承诺将通过两种方式补充第一部分的研究资金机会。首先，它将通过使慈善事业感觉自己的钱去，鼓励慈善参与向他们停止资助的那一刻不会死的东西。此外，这将使联邦政府能够利用成功实验在研究资金和管理方面创造的机构知识。
如果成功的话，这两个部分的计划稍后可以由其他联邦机构复制。政府和国会应优先考虑该计划的资金，以表彰三个融合事实：一个，联邦在研发方面的支出（R＆D）正在增加；第二，美国创新生态系统的运作不佳。第三，是管理研究的新机构结构的扩散（例如，专注的研究组织，私人高级研究项目机构（ARPAS），“科学天使”等等。Swift行动可以利用增加的预算来授权新组织尝试组织研发的新方法，以解决当前系统的硬化症！
挑战和机会
There is a growing consensus that there is a gap between the speed and efficiency of R&D projects closely managed by the government and R&D projects managed by the private sector.
联邦资金是美国研发生态系统的主要部分。但是，大多数联邦研究资金都带有一系列限制：专用指标，这些专用标志可以阻止研究人员花钱在他们认为最重要的事情上（例如设备或实验室自动化），繁重的报告要求，需要通过委员会获得所有建议，以及数十个小时的赠款写作，以令人震惊的少量钱。而且，studies have found这是为了资助创新研究的任务，联邦资助决策往往规避风险。
结果，在政府管理的研究与技术发展与私人管理的同行之间进行正面比较的情况，几乎没有更有效的问题。
This efficiency gap exists largely because privately-managed organizations often push control over research funds to the organization or level where the “research design” occurs. This yields powerful results. Former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency director Arati Prabhakar争论that this mechanism, in the form of empowering program managers, is a big part of why the ARPA model works. In the business world, coupling power (money) and responsibility (research design) is simply common sense. In the research world, the benefits of“嵌入自主权”很简单。自治使组织或个人能够对意外情况迅速做出反应。研究本质上是高度不确定的。嵌入式自主权与研究设计的耦合意味着，基于实验进展的知识，将以最有用的方式花费资金，而不是以研究人员的方式想法would be most useful at the time they submitted their grant proposal.
认识到嵌入式自治能够实现强大，多样化的研究的力量，目前在非学术研究组织中发生了实验的爆炸。许多人太新了，无法取得明确的结果，但是非学术研究组织（包括HHMI Janelia，Dynamicland，Willow Garage和Promont SpaceX）创造了新领域，赢得了诺贝尔奖，并改变了整个行业的范式。但是，即使最成功的研究组织也很难筹集资金，除非有明确的商业案例，否则这会使公共事业的研究陷入困境。慈善家强烈以遗产为动机，因此他们想为可以持续的事情提供资金。结果，私人资助者常常不愿为产生公共良好研发的研究组织提供资金。
Understanding this problem suggests a potent new way of deploying the federal government’s R&D budget: partnering with philanthropists to build a diverse portfolio of research organizations with autonomy over their own budgets, and then providing long-term support to the most effective of those organizations.
In other words, the federal government should experiment with funding organizations rather than projects.
这种方法将使联邦政府在多个风险投资基金中像有限合伙人（LP）一样行事。以这种身份，联邦政府将避免对特定赠款的花费设定过于具体的要求。相反，政府将设定非常高级的优先事项（例如，“创建新的制造范式”或简单地“做有影响力的研究”），为资助的组织提供自主权，以弄清楚如何最佳实现这一目标，然后在事实之后评估成功。
现在是时候投资创意联邦研究资金的方法了。双方支持联邦资助的研发大幅增长。但是，通过过时的研发资金结构向需要发动机维修的汽车的加速器猛烈抨击：猛烈的效率低下，有可能适得其反。相比之下，将自主权嵌入各种组织组合中可以解锁驱动美国经济的出乎意料的，改变游戏的发明和发现：电力，飞机，互联网，晶体管，晶体管，密码学等。
行动计划
当前的政府应在NSF启动两部分计划，以测试将组织优先于项目优先级的研究资金系统。
As Part One of this program, the NSF’s TIP Directorate should pilot a research-funding opportunity in which philanthropically matched grants fund a portfolio of independent research organizations instead of funding specific research initiatives. This pilot funding opportunity should be funded at $100 million per year for 10 years. The Directorate should target funding between 5 and 15 organizations this way,二次匹配根据参与慈善捐助者的数量，慈善资金的价值在100％至1000％之间。
As Part Two of this program, NSF should set aside an additional $100 million per year to sponsor independent research organizations with impressive track records for extended periods of time. The Directorate should set a goal of identifying two organizations during the ten-year pilot that would be good candidates for this long-term funding, funding each at $50 million per year.
下面提供了有关这些程序组件的每个程序组件的更多详细信息。
第一部分：慈善相匹配的赠款
与私人捐助者合作是拟议以组织为中心的资金机会成功的关键。通过仅资助已经筹集慈善资金的组织，联邦政府将利用慈善家对筛查申请人的尽职调查来确保高潜力的获奖者。同样，资金机会应采用二次匹配资金利用捐助者的信心作为向每个组织提供多少资金并减少能够从少数捐助者那里筹集大量资金的组织的偏见。
以这种方式利用慈善意见确实存在偏向于在特别受欢迎的领域或特别擅长销售或营销的组织中偏见的风险。以组织为重点的资金机会可以通过建立平行的资金途径来解决这一风险，从而使大量研究人员可以提出请愿书，以便为组织选择资金。
The TIP Directorate obviously must impose additional criteria beyond the endorsements of the philanthropic and research communities. It will be tempting for the Directorate to prioritize funding organizations working on specific, high-interest technology areas or themes. But the goal of this program is to advance the long term health of the American innovation ecosystem. Often, tomorrow’s high-priority area is one that doesn’t even exist today. To that end, the Directorate should evaluate potential grantee organizations on their “counterfactual impact”: i.e., their capacity to do work that is disincentivized in other institutional structures.
The question of how best to evaluate success of the funding opportunity is a challenging one. It is notoriously hard to evaluate long-term research output. The whole point of this proposal is to move away from short-term metrics and rigid plans, but at the same time the government needs to be responsible to taxpayers. Metrics are the most straightforward way to evaluate outcomes. However, metrics are potentially counterproductive ways to evaluate new and experimental processes because existing metrics presume a specific way of organizing research. We therefore recommend that the TIP Directorate create a Notice of Funding Opportunity to hire an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit board whose job is to holistically evaluate funded organizations. The board should include people working in academia, industrial research, government research, and independent research organizations, as well as some “wildcards”. The board should collectively have deep experience performing and guiding high-uncertainty, long-term research and development.
The board would regularly (but not over-frequently) solicit opinions on output and impacts of funded organizations from the program’s philanthropic partners, members of the government, people working with the organizations, unaffiliated researchers, and members of the organizations themselves. At the end of each year, the board should give each organization an evaluation “report card” containing a holistic letter grade and an explanation for that grade. Organizations that receive an F should immediately be expelled from the funding program, as should organizations that receive a D for three years in a row.
第二部分：深入投资于证明的成功
Kanjun Qiu和Michael Nielsen提出了一个重要的难题：就像政府由镀金年龄慈善家启动的资金图书馆接管资金一样，政府应接管今天非常成功的研究组织的资金。
在试点资金计划的五年中点和十年终点，评估委员会应确定任何产生未偿还产量的资金的组织。然后，小费局应选择其中两个候选人，以获得无限期的政府支持，每个组织的资金水平为5000万美元。这些无限期资助的组织将成为小费预算中的销售项目，除非在极端情况下，每年将续签。通过为慈善机构提供（i）慈善机构的途径，不限于联邦支持作为慈善资助者的“退出策略”的可能性将鼓励其他慈善合作伙伴参与。遗产。
What qualifies as “outstanding output”? Like evaluating success, it’s a challenging question. We recommend using the same board-based grading scheme outlined above. Any organization that receives an A grade in two of the past five years or an A+ in any one of the past five years should be eligible for indefinite support. This approach will require grading to be very strict: for instance, an A+ should only be given to an organization that enables Nobel-prize-quality work.
结论
Building portfolios of independent research organizations is an incredibly effective way of spending government research money. The total federal research budget is almost $160 billion per year. Less than 1% of that could make a massive difference for independent research organizations, most of which have budgets in the $10 million range. Funding especially promising independent research organizations with an additional $10 million or more per year would have a huge effect, empowering organizations that are already doing outstanding work to take their contributions to the next level.
即使是世界上表现最高的私人研究组织，例如Google DeepMind和HHMI Janelia Farm，预算范围为每年2亿美元。赞助一定数量的特别高性能的研究组织，每年额外的1亿美元将产生类似的变革影响。这些庞大的无限赠款还将提供所需的主要激励措施，以将世界领先的慈善事业带到餐桌上，并鼓励最尖端的独立研究组织将其才华奉献给公共部门。实现这些成果的总和仍然只占联邦研发总预算的一小部分。
Finally, we emphasize that the goal of this pilot program is not solely to establish an independent research organization portfolio in the TIP Directorate. It is also an opportunity to test a novel research-funding mechanism that could be replicated at numerous other federal agencies.
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