We Need to Tend Innovation Like We Tend a Fire
At EPIC, we believe that applying innovative data and technology to environmental problems can produce results faster. We continue to believe that federal, state, and local government can and should play a key role in unleashing tech innovation to better manage our nation’s resources for each and every person. But at a time when so many foundational roles of government are in question, we’re stepping back to look at the building blocks of a “healthy tech ecosystem,” one that helps technology grow and thrive across all sectors: public, private and non-profit.
If you’ve had thoughts of escaping to the woods recently, you’ve likely thought of sitting around a campfire. The process of building that fire actually has a lot in common with building technology that works. It’s not always a straight line to success - at least for me - but there are things that you can and should do to make a glowing fire more likely. Below we explore five building blocks of a healthy tech ecosystem - we envision these as essential functions that a variety of organizations and partnerships can play in emerging tech sectors focused on managing natural resources. Over the next few months, we plan to explore these building blocks more in depth through case studies to sharpen our own fire making skills.
1. A Fire Building Strategy
Building a fire starts with a strategy. You need to know why you’re building it (e.g. for warmth, to cook) and how you’re going to build it (e.g. the log cabin method) so you can start thinking about what you need to get it burning. That means communicating with your fellow campers to build out that strategy. A strategy is not deciding in advance precisely when and where every stick will be placed, those decisions need to be made once the fire has started.
In the technology world, identifying a purpose and a strategy means having:
Clear problem statements based on what users need: what problem is technology solving, for whom, and over what time horizon? The only way to understand that is to keep getting real user input regularly.
Clarity about what needs innovation (and what doesn’t): Technology is rarely if ever built completely from scratch and incorporates many different elements, data, models, software, graphics, hardware, that all drive the value of it to the user. Is the user interface the bottle neck or is there a data gap, for example?
Continuous communication with innovators: Making sure that innovators everywhere (inside and outside government) know that a) there’s still an active problem, b) how that problem is framed and measured by those most invested in solving it, and c) who is already doing something to try to solve it.
For an example, take a look at the problem statements in Pacific Gas & Electric’s 2024 R&D Strategy Report, which is updated annually and gives concise information about the nature of the problem. Having a framework for communicating across organizations on the current state of innovation can also help - readiness levels are already used in many innovation contexts but are not consistently applied to environmental tech.
2. A Fire Ring
It’s not a given that you can just light a fire anywhere under any conditions and expect it to be hot when you need it and not spread out of control. Typically you build some kind of structure, a fire ring, to establish clear boundaries for the fire and the conditions for it to thrive.
Tech developers thrive when they know the environment they are building in. Part of that is understanding where the hard lines are (the fire ring) and where they have flexibility to try things (inside the fire ring). Rocks strewn around a campsite don’t function as a fire ring; similarly, disorganized or hidden requirements for technology that aren’t communicated or coordinated make it hard for tech providers, particularly new ones, to build something useful. Innovators building and managing technology to solve environmental problems constantly run up against these hidden restrictions - making them clear from the get go and communicating them widely is a huge win for a healthy tech ecosystem. Prebuilt “sandboxes” that go beyond “pilots” can also help define and expand the zone where innovators have freedom to try new technologies in a similar environment to where they will eventually deploy.
3. The Right Fuel
Having the right mix of fuel at the right time is key to building a fire that lasts. Not every spark is going to turn into the fire you want but with the right starter, kindling, and logs to help it grow, one of them will eventually.
For technology, an understanding and strategic use of partnerships, especially in government, can help an innovative team get access to a whole range of financial, human, and in-kind resources. Creating mission-driven “accelerators” and “incubators” that are available to innovators inside and outside of government is another sign of a healthy tech ecosystem. There are emerging examples in the private sector and academia for industries like Fire Tech. NSF’s “Convergence Accelerator” programs explicitly try to bring together teams from industry, academia, nonprofits, government and other communities of practice, and support them with intensive hands-on education and mentorship, but more are needed!
Building a fire also depends on timing. If you ignore a small fire for too long, it will go out.
This is exactly what happens with mission-driven technology development. Startups and other innovative teams need feedback quickly, otherwise they have to move on to another project, but slow and piecemeal evaluation of their tools often prevents that. The only way to achieve speed - and keep the fire alive - is to intentionally build a streamlined evaluation process that focuses on clear articulations of the tradeoffs of new tools compared to the status quo. Streamlined means avoiding duplication, not rigor. Creating trust among developers and users, such that no one feels like they are wasting their time, is the best way to achieve speed.
Test bed programs, like NYC’s Environmental Tech Lab, can serve as an example. After an application process, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection selects companies to participate in an 8-week Proof of Concept (POC) during which a minimally viable test is conducted to understand selected products’ capabilities and their value proposition. Upon successful completion, NYC DEP selects the most promising companies to deploy their solutions on a larger scale during a yearlong Pilot.
4. Fire Builders and Tenders
Fires don’t build themselves, people do. It takes skill to use a flint and nurture a fire, but cooking dinner using the fire involves a completely different skillset. Both are essential for success.
Similarly, the best digital tools for managing and protecting natural resources are built and managed by teams with direct experience in the field, who also have experience building technical solutions. The problem is that innovators possessing both are relatively rare. A healthy tech ecosystem needs nimble, effective talent pipelines and career ladders in and outside of government.
We need talent and recruitment strategies designed to account for the unique demands and characteristics of specific workforces. Take technology for wildfire management, the seasonality of firefighting work makes it impossible for firefighters to gain technology credentials at certain times of year. Having expert teams on all sides of the public-private-non-profit divide—and effective conduits between them—is essential to everyone’s long-term learning and success, and an imbalance on one side will lead to bad decisions about what technology to adopt, risking wasted tax payer dollars on poorly built tools. How do we get technologists into forests, and foresters into Silicon Valley? are questions we need to ask and answer more often.
5. Enjoy the Fire
Building a fire can feel like an achievement but if no one uses it, it probably wasn’t worth the effort. A fire, just like a new innovation, is meant to be shared and enjoyed with others.
It is incredibly easy to think that “if we build it, they will come”—but that isn’t always true; especially when you’re asking people to redirect limited resources away from a crisis to adopt new technologies. Authentic adoption means making sure that users know how to use a tool to its full potential, and that it actually gets put to use—a surprisingly tall order in practice, and one we constantly see underinvestment in. While there’s always a push to build the next shiny tool, there is rarely a push to make sure that the latest one works for someone who’s only just joined the team. Ensuring authentic adoption goes beyond designing tools with user input. It requires that users know how (and how not) to use the tool.
There are also things that can keep you from enjoying the camp fire - like having to constantly run back to the tent for stuff. That’s what we often ask of users of environmental tech. Opening 17 different apps to complete daily tasks is frustrating, and in the world of natural resource management it can lead to confusion and paralysis, especially when different data sources and apps are displaying conflicting information. That doesn’t mean that there should be one app to rule them all but it does mean information and sometimes features need to be shared between them. Land managers need curated information at their finger tips to do their jobs well. But technology naturally defaults to silos, not interoperability and data sharing. It takes sustained effort to make multiple digital tools and technologies all work together, but this is another area that often sees underinvestment.
Some agencies and sectors like Ag have taken action to change this. OpenTEAM, funded by USDA, builds the tools and communities needed to make sure that farmers retain control of their data while seamlessly connecting with a variety of farm service providers in and outside of government. Every environmental tech sector needs an organization or initiative that is strongly pushing in the direction of interoperability.
A healthy tech ecosystem that continually renews itself is the best way to maintain progress in using data and tools to manage our natural resources, but it doesn’t build itself. We’re committed to helping build those ecosystems to tackle a variety of challenges - we’re already actively working on drinking water, wetlands, and forestry - and we’ll be following up on this blog with case studies that go into more depth on talent, incubators, test beds and more. If you have ideas about what works (and what doesn’t) or how we can start building something together, reach out to Reed Van Beveren (reed@policyinnovation.org). We’d love to spend some time around the fire with you!