There was interesting news out of the annual meeting of the International Astronomical Union in  Rio De Janeiro this month.   No, not the discovery of a new exoplanet or red complex galaxies, but rather a growing concern that “managerialism” may kill the golden age of astronomical discovery.(http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14209662)  As telescopes become bigger and more expensive, management techniques have been introduced to more smoothly run large projects - and threaten the individual flair that has been the source of discovery for the past two centuries.  Robert Williams, the new president of the IAU and responsible for the discovery of the Hubble Deep Field was quoted as saying “High-risk, high-reward projects require hard decisions that are best made by individuals, not committees.” 

As if on cue, enter Norm Augustine, the former chair of Lockheed Martin, who reported Friday on the recommendations of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.  (This is the “committee” tasked by the current administration to evaluate the future of manned space flight.)  After 90 days and “reviewing 3000 options”,  they narrowed it down to 16 options and then 4 options with the basic conclusion that human missions to the moon by 2020 are unrealistic or “not executable.”   What a beautiful management process – and what a disappointing result!

So what’s the lesson?   Maybe EF Schumacher got it right in 1973 when he made the argument for human-scaled, decentralized technology, that is “cheap enough so that [it is] accessible to virtually everyone; suitable for small-scale application; and compatible with man’s need for creativity.”  While we might need the 25-metre giant Magellan Telescope, we also need a human organization of backyard scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who refuse to be “mere machine minders.”  And we need new management processes that support and integrate the loose federation of discoverers without squashing them.   (The VC model here in Silicon Valley probably comes closest to what this  process looks like – giving those backyard scientists a sandbox of capital, networks and expertise to play with, investing in a lot of small-scale experiments and expecting a hit-rate not much greater than 20%.)  And if this is the architecture for innovation, social scientists could do more to identify the human processes that actually support and integrate loose federations of small-scale innovators.  Can we develop something more inspired than a “committee” as a human tool for collaboration?  This could be the most valuable discovery of this century!