Compass Pilot

Compass试点的目的是探索机会，增加代表性不足群体获得和参与联邦种子基金计划的机会。科技创新在应对医疗保健差距、环境问题和经济不平等等社会挑战方面发挥着关键作用。然而，那些受这些社会挑战影响最大的人往往从美国联邦种子基金计划中受益较少。事实上，这些项目的申请者来自代表不足的群体的比例低于他们在美国人口中所占比例。多个联邦资助者已经投资于推广工作，但缺乏来自代表不足的群体的创新者获得种子基金和研究项目，这仍然是一个长期而重大的问题。历史和体制上的不公正导致了代际财富差距、接受高等教育的机会有限以及孤立的社会网络，使一些人无法获得科学和技术方面的资金。资助项目的外展、申请和审查过程中的结构性偏见也可能对获得资金构成重大障碍。来自不同群体的申请者可能甚至不知道这些项目，因为他们的拓展范围有限，当他们了解到这些机会时，他们可能无法获得驾驭如此复杂的流程所需的背景信息和支持。虽然这并不是不同团队试图将其创新推向市场的所有障碍的详尽列表，但这些观察为拟议的工作提供了动力。这些问题是在系统层面上发生的，但随着时间的推移，有针对性的和共同设计的倡议--这是指南针试点的预期输出--可能会产生重大差异。虽然其他项目旨在将更多代表性不足的人群纳入现有方案，但该项目的重点是与代表性不足的社区共同设计工具和解决方案。Compass Pilot汇集了三种私营部门创新方法的最佳实践-以人为中心的设计、精益影响设计和敏捷开发-以种子基金编程。该项目团队由公共政策实验室(PPL)和构建工作室的工作人员组成，将遵循PPL以人为本的设计方法(包括敏捷开发最佳实践)，与来自不同群体的创新者和主题专家合作。一开始，项目团队将与创新者和其他利益相关者进行定性研究，以确定现有挑战、集思广益初步想法，并确定潜在工具的优先顺序。然后，该团队将与来自代表人数不足的群体的“共同设计队列”创新者共同设计工具。接下来，这些工具将由更多创新者组成的“试点队伍”进行试验，并使用精益影响方法进行评估，以评估效果和价值。最后，试点学习将被纳入最后一套工具。PPL和Constructed的分阶段方法已经在一系列服务设计项目中进行了测试，将使团队能够遵循系统的过程，同时也对参与者的反馈做出回应。团队不会在一开始就预测最终的输出是什么，而是将在迭代周期中与利益相关者合作，通过迭代周期发现并改进干预措施。这一过程确保最终产出植根于研究过程中出现的需求和机会，与来自历史上代表性不足的群体的企业家创新者共同设计。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The intention of the Compass Pilot is to explore opportunities that will increase access to and participation in federal seed fund programs by underrepresented groups. Scientific and technical innovation plays a critical role in addressing societal challenges, such as healthcare disparities, environmental issues, and economic inequalities. Yet those most affected by these societal challenges tend to benefit less from U.S. federal seed fund programs. Indeed, a smaller proportion of applicants to these programs come from underrepresented groups than is relative to their share of the U.S. population. Multiple federal funders have invested in outreach efforts, but the lack of innovators from underrepresented groups accessing seed fund and research programs remains a persistent and significant issue. Historical and systemic injustices have led to generational wealth gaps, limited access to higher education, and segregated social networks, preventing some from having the scope and means to pursue funding in science and technology. Structural biases within funding programs’ outreach, application, and review processes may also present significant barriers to access. Applicants from diverse groups may not even be aware of these programs because of limited outreach, and when they do learn of these opportunities, they may not have access to the contextual information and support required to navigate such complex processes. While this is not an exhaustive list of all the barriers for diverse teams attempting to bring their innovations to market, these observations provide the impetus for the proposed work. These issues occur at a systemic level, but targeted and co-designed initiatives — which are the intended outputs of the Compass Pilot - can make significant differences over time. Though other projects are aimed at bringing more under-represented populations into existing programs, this project is focused on co-designing tools and solutions with underrepresented communities. The Compass Pilot brings together the best practices of three private sector innovation approaches human-centered design, lean impact design, and agile development — to seed fund programming. The project team, comprising staff from the Public Policy Lab (PPL) and ConstructEd Studio, will collaborate with innovators from diverse groups and subject-matter experts following PPL’s human-centered design methodology, which includes agile development best practices. At the outset, the project team will engage in qualitative research with innovators and other stakeholders to define existing challenges, brainstorm preliminary ideas, and prioritize potential tools. The team will then co-design tools with a “co-design cohort” of innovators from underrepresented groups. Next, these tools will be piloted by a “pilot cohort” of additional innovators and evaluated, using lean impact methods, to assess efficacy and value. Lastly, pilot learnings will be incorporated into a final set of tools. PPL and ConstructEd’s phased approach, which has been tested across a range of service design projects, will allow the team to follow a systematic process while also being responsive to participants’ feedback. Rather than predicting what the final outputs will be at the outset, the team will work with stakeholders in iterative cycles through which interventions are discovered and refined along the way. This process ensures that final outputs are rooted in the needs and opportunities that arise during research, co-designed with entrepreneurial innovators from historically underrepresented groups.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.