# Keynote Case Study: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center — The Business of Space Was Changing
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Few organizations are more closely associated with the future than NASA. And yet that was precisely the challenge I was asked to address when I spent a day at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with senior mission directors, scientists, researchers and innovation leaders. The future of space itself was changing. The keynote and half-day working session were hosted by Goddard’s Innovative Technology Partnerships Office. In the room were people responsible for some of the most complex scientific and engineering programs on the planet — including members of the team working on the James Webb Space Telescope. My message was built around a simple but profound reality: The business of space was no longer defined only by government agencies and traditional aerospace organizations. A new space economy was emerging. Privately funded ventures were accelerating. Commercial launch systems were developing. New entrepreneurs were entering the sector. Crowdfunding was beginning to finance scientific ideas. New business models were appearing around space tourism, in-space manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and asteroid mining. The implications went well beyond rockets. For a research-driven organization such as NASA, the acceleration of external innovation meant that partnership, collaboration and openness would become increasingly important. The old model assumed that breakthrough science happened inside large institutions with large budgets and long planning cycles. The emerging model was far more distributed. Ideas could come from startups. Capital could come from unexpected sources. Research could happen across networks. Scientific knowledge could accelerate outside the walls of the institution. That was the strategic issue. NASA had extraordinary depth, history and capability. But even an organization built around exploration had to continue exploring new ways of working. Six themes framed the discussion: The Commercialization of Space. Private companies and entrepreneurs were beginning to reshape an industry once dominated by government agencies. Accelerating Science. Discovery cycles were shortening as new tools, computing power and global collaboration accelerated research. Distributed Innovation. Important ideas increasingly emerged from startups, universities, networks and unconventional partners. New Funding Models. Venture capital, private wealth and even crowdfunding were creating new ways to finance science and exploration. Partnership as Strategy. Organizations needed to reach outside traditional boundaries to access new ideas, capabilities and speed. Transformative Leadership. Leaders needed to help people understand that the industry surrounding them could change faster than the institution itself. This was my second NASA keynote. A few years earlier, I had spoken outside Houston to astronauts, launch directors, mission controllers and others deeply involved in the human side of space exploration. At Goddard, the issue was different. It was about transformation. How does a science organization with decades of institutional knowledge continue to lead when the ecosystem around it begins to move at entrepreneurial speed? My answer was that it must become even more connected to the world beyond itself. It must collaborate differently. Partner differently. Think differently. And continually challenge the assumptions that made it successful in the past. The future has a habit of disrupting even the organizations that helped invent it. That day at Goddard reinforced one of the most important leadership lessons I have carried onto stages ever since: The biggest risk is not that the future is uncertain. It is that the future happens faster than your mental model of it.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2013/07/keynote-case-study-nasa-goddard-space-flight-center-the-business-of-space-was-changing/