NRA-NASA(national aeronautics and space administration)research announcement - shooting for the STARS with our feet on the ground: liberating leapfrog innovation -the convergent aeronautics solution…

This is a firm fixed-price contract awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center to Vigyan Inc., a self-certified small disadvantaged business, for the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project. The contract, valued at $441,458, supports research to help NASA foster an innovative culture and build an innovative workforce capable of responding to global technology trends. The scope includes guiding, coaching, and supporting the CAS leadership and project teams through parallel research efforts focused on complex aeronautics challenges, utilizing a combination of action research, liberating structures, and developmental evaluation. The goal is to enable NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) to rapidly transform how innovation initiatives are organized and managed. This contract is not a set-aside.

NRA-NASA(national aeronautics and space administration)research announcement - shooting for the STARS with our feet on the ground: liberating leapfrog innovation -the convergent aeronautics solution (CAS) project uses short-duration activities to establish early-stage concept and technology feasibility for high-potential solutions. Internal teams propose ideas for overcoming key barriers associated with large-scale aeronautics problems associated with armds six strategic thrusts. The focus is on merging traditional aeronautics disciplines with advancements driven by the non-aeronautics world to advance innovative solutions to these barriers to open and enable new capabilities in commercial aviation. On february 11, 2015, NASA headquarters aeronautics research mission directorate (armd) released the NASA research announcement (NRA) NNH15ZEA001N, entitled research opportunities in aeronautics 2015 appendix d.4 convergent aeronautics solutions project. CAS seeks to engage the external community to assist NASA to identify, assess, and adapt alternative methods and tools to support an innovative culture and build an innovative workforce able to respond to global trends including accelerating pace of technological change, ready access to technical information, advances in technologies outside of aeronautics, and increasing complexity of society. In support of this, the solicitation sought proposals to for research projects that can be used by NASA to inform and support internal decisions associated with developing skills within the NASA workforce and infrastructure at the NASA field centers to foster and sustain an innovative culture necessary to pursue highly collaborative and transformative solutions across the armd strategic thrusts; nurture development of in-house, cross-discipline, technical integrators and facilitators that can foster idea generation, outreach, and collaboration; gather and learn to apply best innovation practices; incorporate convergent (non-aero) capabilities that help enable innovation culture; identify and assess platforms and their utilization for collaboration across diverse technical communities, increase awareness of strategic challenges, and support collaborative distributed development and decision making associated with innovative solutions; and enhance existing NASA labs and facilities to create and enhance physical and digital inter-center incubation and innovation environments. This statement of work is the result of a proposal submitted by vigyan, INC. For award under the ROA NNH15ZEA001N appendix d.4 subtopic d.4.2.1 transformative innovation. The scope of this effort is to help inform and influence the design and implementation of CAS operational and project management models and practices, training and skills development, team facilitation, and support for innovation. To achieve this objective, the contractor will help the CAS project office radically and permanently transform how innovation initiatives are organized and managed for armd by guiding, coaching, and supporting CAS leadership and projects teams through three parallel research efforts focused on complex aeronautics challenges. Realizing such transformation is achievable through the utilization of a proven combination of action research, liberating structures, and developmental evaluation. Using this combination, the CAS leadership and the projects teams will prototype technical solutions while simultaneously studying and practicing new ways of managing innovation projects. The research project structure will enable armd/CAS to leap over incremental technical solutions, conventional change management methods, and legacy habits into a new future, boot-strapping a new culture of innovation along the way.