American national security, and the DoD's ability to deliver that security, is enabled by our technological dominance. However, two forces are putting that dominance into doubt 1) advances by near-peer competitors and 2) shifts in the commercial R&D space that have made DoD R&D projects less attractive. We propose researching the factors, incentives and barriers that motivate companies to participate in DOD R&D and based on the findings develop a proof of concept tool that will allow R&D contracting officers to easily analyze R&D projects, formulate affective incentives, and that provides a fact base that facilitates negotiations with industry. We will also research and test options to automate elements of the analysis to reduce errors, provide objectivity, and accelerate the pace of R&D contracting. To deliver the work we will leverage MIT's Innovation Ecosystem analysis model that we have previously used to assess the economic incentives in other industry and geographic communities and the impact that DoD has in them. Federal Foundry will leverage its experience analyzing incentives and automating incentive recommendations which was developed as part of an Air Force SBIR focussed on analyzing pilot retention/separation decision making, developing algorithms to predict separation, the drivers for a particular pilot's motivation to separate, and tools that recommended assignments that would improve retention.
