An Assessment of ARPA-E
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
32 AN ASSESSMENT OF ARPA-E
management, use of special hiring authority to build a high-quality human
infrastructure, and maintenance of institutional autonomy. Since 2014 it has
administered the government contracting process itself using its own contracting
staff. This approach enables the agency to hand-pick its procurement staff; act
more quickly in such matters as creating contracts and cooperative agreements;
and, when appropriate, act flexibly and take strategic risks. ARPA-E has
introduced new institutional arrangements, such as the creation of its internal
T2M program (reflecting the reality that, unlike DARPA awardees, ARPA-E
performers do not sell products primarily into a single-stream procurement
system) and a research fellows program to enhance its in-house scientific and
technical expertise. Figure 2-3 illustrates how ARPA-E has borrowed from and
how it departs from the DARPA model.
Program Creation
As of the time of this study, new programs appear to arise almost solely
because a prospective program director pitches the idea as part of his or her
interview for the position. Once a program and its program director are
accepted, ARPA-E begins a new program with a “deep dive”—a comprehensive
exploration of an energy-related theme aimed at identifying individual topics
that represent potential projects for the development of technologies that would
FIGURE 2-3 ARPA-E’s depiction of how it has built itself on a foundation modeled
after DARPA.
NOTE: DoD = U.S. Department of Defense; R&D = research and development.
SOURCE: ARPA-E, 2015a.
