How to Make NASA Cool (Again)
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
When I was growing up, asking a classroom full of kids that question almost always included the answer “I want to be an astronaut!” Space was cool. Space was something new, innovative and entrepreneurial. Inspiration was clearly NASA’s main value proposition.
Compare that with today.
What inspires tomorrow’s explorers, engineers and business leaders? From my personal experience, it has less and less to do with NASA, and more and more to do with other, well let’s just say “cooler” things.
Tomorrow’s leaders want to work for the “cool” company. They want to work for the next Google. The one that is open to new ideas. And so I wonder, how do we make NASA cool again? How do we use our space program as a catalyst to pass along that innovative, entrepreneurial, American spirit that got us to the moon in less than 10 years and launched a generation of innovators? Or better yet, how do we communicate all the cool things NASA is actually doing? Because, whether you know it or not, NASA does some amazing things!
I think it’s simple. Let them participate.
Think about it. Isn’t going to space so much cooler when you get to actually go? Isn’t that lunar rover so much better when you actually get to build it and then drive it? Isn’t that classroom outreach visit by the astronaut so much more relevant when they answer your question and then ask you one?
People want to be personally engaged. People want to see how they fit into the big picture. People, of all ages, want to be inspired. So that’s our challenge. We call it“participatory exploration” – creating a government agency that engages the American public in its mission and inspires the next generation of explorers, no matter what they want to be when they grow up.
How do people participate in what you do?
If you are in an organization, with a great product, that is having a tough time convincing your customers of your value proposition, you are not alone. I challenge you to think about how you can create a platform for participation in your organization. Don’t settle for mediocrity by just exposing people to or educating them about your product, collaborate with them to make it better.
If you want to attract the best and the brightest, open up your doors to new ideas and use participatory initiatives to attract the best and brightest earlier by allowing them to participate in your company.
At NASA, we know that business models are not eternal and we’re challenging the way we’ve always done things by working to make participatory exploration a core part of our business model. Whether NASA is designing the next exploration missions, using social networks to allow students to interact directly with astronauts living in space or creating a cutting edge Cloud Computing Platform to give the public unprecedented access to scientific data, NASA is engaging the American public in its mission.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few of the successful initiatives that are leading the way at NASA:
- NASA’s highly successful Centennial Challenges prize program has engaged inventors from around the country to successfully build prototypes of technology and innovation for use in space.
- We’re using social engagement tools to collect hundreds of ideas for improving the agency’s openness and transparency, more suggestions than any other government agency.
- Through a new policy initiative, NASA is working to make open source software development more collaborative for the benefit of the agency and the public. NASA has created “Nebula,” the U.S. government’s only cloud computing platform, which offers an easier way for NASA scientists and researchers to share large, complex data sets with external partners and the public.
- NASA is giving the public live access to its missions through NASA TV and its many social media sites.
- NASA’s education outreach program includes initiatives where students have opportunities to control space instruments remotely.
- NASA is establishing a new Participatory Exploration Office, which will be charged with infusing more public participation into NASA’s mission in order to directly engage citizens in exploration.
This article is cross-posted from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business “McCombs Today” Blog and was originally published on May 14th, 2010.
supernat on May 18th, 2010
Great post, as always, Nick! That’s awesome that NASA is establishing a Participatory Exploration Office! They should definitely put you in charge of that.
Beth Beck on May 18th, 2010
Love your post!!! We need people like YOU at NASA. That’s how we make it cool again. (And fun, too.)
tinacan25 on May 19th, 2010
NASA doesn’t need to try and be cool, NASA is inherently cool, it’s people who are still afraid to let their geek flags fly, so to speak, that need reaching out to and NASA is already doing that through social networking. I’ve been reaching out to all my facebook friends to follow me on twitter in the hopes that a higher number of followers will make me more attractive to NASA as a potential future tweetup participant and I’ve been very surprised by some friends I never knew were NASA fans because they didn’t want to be seen as geeky. I’ll do my part to help them out of their prospective closets, and NASA should just keep up the great work!
cxd on May 19th, 2010
NASA was always cool…
We screwed up when we presented stone-age technology to the new President (go backward???), rather than Chan-Diaz, whose propulsion system funding got cut off only so we can go back and visit Fred and Wilma Flintstone….
I think the new President expects “a little bit more Inginuity” from us, rather than go backward to the previous good ol’ boy system/technology.
brianshiro on May 19th, 2010
Nick, great post. If you need anyone for the new Participatory Exploration office, let me know. -Brian
Nelson Bridwell on May 19th, 2010
Nick:
Cool is a momentary fashion statement that will rapidly become detested, like bell bottoms and disco. In contrast, 100 years from now, the Apollo Moon landing will be remembered, long after pop songs have faded into oblivion.
What NASA needs is to be allowed to actually go out and explore space, rather than just talk about it.
Hilda on May 22nd, 2010
I think that space exploration can be “cool”. Why does NASA, as a federal agency, have to be “cool”? Some real rethinking of the presumption that U.S. space exploration and NASA have to be synonymous is long overdue.
Note well that many of us who bemoan the lack of coolness in space exploration today grew up in the Apollo generation. Now, there was no “participatory exploration” then. But it was uber cool anyway. Perhaps this generation is just more dependent on participatory involvement than previous ones?
Lucie on June 17th, 2010
I think Hilda makes a good point. I do think the younger generations require more participatory involvement, because that’s all they’ve ever known. They grew up with computers, unlike their parents, and communicate in whole new ways. They are decidedly more efficient in many ways because of that. It’s a huge challenge to keep them engaged, because their sense of reality is so much more intense and of-the-moment than generations before them. Reality to them is what is right in front of them. We need to accept that and figure out ways to motivate them, even if it’s difficult. I also agree that NASA is “inherently cool” – however, that does not mean that this is not still an easy thing to do. We just try to make it look easy! Seriously, the openness that I’ve seen come along the past couple of years has been outstanding and amazing, and I’m looking forward to much more participatory exploration. I foresee great things in our future because of it.
Let’s set an example of how participatory exploration can work – let’s all put our heads together and come up with a way to save the Gulf Coast. I know there are other federal agencies doing it right now, and I think NASA should join in. This would be just one more way out of many out there that our brainpower can be used and shared. Space is ours – as is the collective intelligence of all you people reading this right now. Thank you, Nick (and everyone else involved) for encouraging it, inspiring it, and moving it forward.