Page 1 of 18 IAC–13–D1.3.3 64th International Astronautical Congress, Beijing, China. Copyright ©2013 by the International Astronautical Federation. All rights reserved. IAC–13–D1.3.3 DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION: A COMPARISON BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND COMMERCIAL SPACE Tibor S. Balint Royal College of Art, Innovation Design Engineering Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU, United Kingdom e-mail: tibor.balint@network.rca.ac.uk AbstrAct The world is changing around us, and it is driven by innovation. For over ive decades now, space exploration re- quired and beneited from novel technologies and processes to expand human presence into distant destinations, while also broadening our understanding of the universe. The scale of such innovations varied from incremental through radical to disruptive. These are commonly recognized innovation terms, yet many of the characteristics are different between space and consumer markets. Furthermore, government supported space agencies may innovate differently from established and emerging commercial space companies. The former is driven by human or robotic exploration goals—instead of proits—coupled with system and process complexities, high development costs, risk averseness, near term stakeholder needs, budgetary uncertainties, changing priorities, government driven earmarks, policies, so- lidiied processes, often rigid management approaches, and many other factors. Today, these present a particular challenge for introducing disruptive innovations. In comparison, proit driven commercial space industries beneit from previous investments and breakthroughs by government agencies, or can be highly dependent on agencies as funding sources and subsequent technology infusion pathways. Due to the close coupling, many characteristics are common between the two. Yet the desire and need persists to accelerate progress by bringing disruptive innovations to space technologies. This may require new approaches drawn from a new way of thinking. While good leadership, management, science and technology expertise can successfully reconcile constraints between usability, feasibility and viability of programs, projects, and processes, a design thinker could go a step beyond and successfully harmonize these. Thus, the introduction of design thinking to space technology developments and processes could beneit port- folio management, future planning, and could result in closer ties with stakeholders. If successfully applied, this may yield superior break through technology and process innovations. This paper provides a snapshot of the current state of space technology innovation domain, including working through development pipelines, infusion pathways, using various tools and processes, stakeholder interests and constraints, and identiies potential barriers to innovation. The discussion is followed by an introduction to design thinking within the space technology framework, and highlight its potential beneits to at least a subset of future technology and process development needs. IntroductIon It has been stated that for organizations to progress, to develop and grow, become more proitable, eficient, and sustainable, they need to successfully implement new ideas, or in other words, innovate. But the word “innova- tion” can have many meanings. On one hand it provides lexibility to interpret it, but it can be also confusing. If innovation is described as: “Ideas successfully applied for people / by people”, then what do the component words mean? What is “success”? Success can have a tem- poral dimension, where an innovation might be initially successful, and eventually fail or vice versa. What is “ap- plied”? Is it applied to a product, a process, a service, or multiple of these? Is it applied within a single part of an organization, such as a Directorate (e.g., NASA’s Mission Directorates), or a Branch, or a Team? Or is it broader and applicable to the whole Agency (e.g., NASA), or company, or nationwide (e.g., the US National Initiatives for Manufacturing Innovation), or even internationally / globally (e.g., collaboration between NASA and ESA)? Does it involve a large group of users (e.g., the science or technology communities)? Finally, what and who are the sources of the “ideas”? Especially when combining new and old ways of thinking. For example, much success of emerging commercial space companies (e.g., Space X) can be contributed to signiicant investments and technol- ogy solutions by NASA several decades ago. Innovation can encounter multiple obstacles. Conse- quently, implementing innovative ideas and changing the organizational culture—especially in a government framework—requires tailoring the innovation processes. In turn we may identify new unexplored pathways and create new opportunities, which could feed back to a broader understanding and implementation of new ideas. At government run programs, organizational, program and project managed practices are well established and often rigid. This does not readily facilitate lexibility