Mission Statement

I want to point, approvingly, to another post at Project Syndicate by Mariana Mazzucato:

In my new book, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, I argue that NASA’s program to put a man on the moon still offers lessons in catalyzing and governing public-private relationships that deliver results. Costing taxpayers the equivalent of $283 billion today, the Apollo Program stimulated innovation in multiple sectors – from aeronautics and nutrition materials to electronics and software – while also strengthening the public sector’s own capabilities.

NASA paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies like General Motors, Pratt & Whitney (known then as United Aircraft), and Honeywell to invent the new fuel, propulsion, and stabilization systems inside its legendary Saturn V rockets. These publicly funded technologies then created numerous spinoffs that we still use today, including baby formula (from the astronauts’ dried food) and cordless vacuum cleaners (from the machines that scoured the moon’s surface). The integrated circuits used for navigation were a foundation stone of modern computing.

Critically, NASA made sure that the government got a good deal, offering companies “fixed-price” contracts to force them to operate efficiently, while also providing incentives for continual quality improvements. And the contracts’ “no-excess profits” provisions helped to ensure that the space race was driven by scientific curiosity, not greed or speculation.

One thing that ever mission needs is a mission statement. Here’s a good one:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It has all the components of a good mission statement. It is succinct; it states the goal in straightforward terms; it is inspiring; and it establishes a timeframe and deadline.

As should be apparent from that some projects lend themselves to good mission statements while others do not. Building a new power grid in ten years does; declaring war against cancer does not. Going to the moon does; systemic racism does not. Building Boulder Dam does; lowering carbon emissions does not.

I’m in favor of new federal missions but I’m opposed to open-ended, likely impossible, and questionably practical boondoggles. You can tell the difference between the two based on their mission statements and how they’re run and overseen.