The Advanced Research Project Agencies are designed to fund high-risk, high-reward programs that, if successful, would provide the United States with transformative capabilities. The authors explore the strengths and limitations of "Goldilocks" problems — those that lie on the frontiers of scientific and technical knowledge yet can provide clear and timely signals of success or failure — in developing research programs and portfolios.

How Advanced Research Project Agencies Pick Their Programs

The Benefits and Limits of Goldilocks Problems

Aaron B. Frank, Ryan Andrew Brown

ResearchPublished Dec 3, 2024

The Advanced Research Project Agencies (ARPAs) are designed to fund high-risk, high-reward programs that, if successful, would provide the United States with transformative capabilities. In this report, the authors use insights gleaned from discussions with experts on the use of "Goldilocks" problems — those that lie on the frontiers of current scientific and technical knowledge yet can provide clear signals of success or failure within a bounded period of time — in developing research programs and portfolios. They also examine how the ARPAs — or more specifically, those who lead, perform, evaluate, and advise their research — think about the role of risk in the ARPA mission and service to the larger departments they support.

Key Findings

  • ARPA problem selection sits atop a larger set of considerations that speak directly to how ARPAs and their programs fit into the broader science and technology landscape.
  • ARPAs operate in two research modes: (1) exploitation, which emphasizes focused efforts to push the limits of existing science and technology to achieve specific performance metrics or operational goals, and (2) exploration, which emphasizes the search for new scientific knowledge and technologies that provide new ways to imagine and address a core mission.
  • The ARPAs' logic of problem selection, which emphasizes organizational independence and risk seeking, makes ARPA programs unlikely to be reliable sources of operational technology.
  • Maximizing the value of the ARPAs requires a broader consideration of how the ARPAs themselves connect with other research funders, industry, and others that collectively fill the gaps between prototypes and robust, deployable systems.

Recommendations

  • The ARPAs should develop a consistent approach to program postmortems, including questions that capture what was learned, what worked, what did not, and what program managers and researchers must consider in future research.
  • The ARPAs should develop a communication strategy that articulates the value of discovering scientific and technical barriers and dead ends in pursuit of their research objectives.
  • The ARPAs should use technology foresighting processes to assist in identifying the marginal value that their programs might have on the broader science and technology ecosystem.
  • The ARPAs should continue experimenting with new funding and staffing models as they develop and enter new fields of research.
  • At the departmental level, senior leaders must possess a high tolerance for risk and ensure that the ARPAs reside in a robust ecosystem of supporting organizations.
  • Measures regarding the successes and failures of the ARPAs should be independent of an ARPA's impact on acquisition outcomes, because nontechnical barriers to transition exist outside an ARPA's control and are exacerbated by challenges to existing organizational and operational paradigms.
  • Rather than measure the success or failure of the ARPAs by focusing on research transition, a more productive policy question is to identify, develop, and support innovation pathways by which ARPA research might transition into the next stages of development.

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RAND Style Manual

Frank, Aaron B. and Ryan Andrew Brown, How Advanced Research Project Agencies Pick Their Programs: The Benefits and Limits of Goldilocks Problems, RAND Corporation, RR-A2471-1, 2024. As of April 9, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2471-1.html

Chicago Manual of Style

Frank, Aaron B. and Ryan Andrew Brown, How Advanced Research Project Agencies Pick Their Programs: The Benefits and Limits of Goldilocks Problems. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2471-1.html.
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Funding for this research was made possible by RAND National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) exploratory research funding that was provided through the FFRDC contract and approved by NDRI's primary sponsor. This research was conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Program of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD).

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