By Tom Fox September 16 at 10:26 AM

Rod Pyle, the author of Innovation the NASA Way,has led leadership trainings at NASA's Johnson Space Center for its top executives and has also trained leaders from Fortune 100 companies. Pyle spoke about NASA and fostering innovation with Tom Fox, a guest writer for On Leadership and vice president for leadership and innovation at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Fox also heads up their Center for Government Leadership. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q. What are some of the traits that make for successful innovators?

A. What I saw at NASA at large, and in looking at the history of the space race and the Apollo and early shuttle programs, was this sense of daring and boldness. Innovation comes with risk. In the public sector, youve got a lot of visibility and sometimes thats a problem. Yet the people at NASA who are successful always take risks. They make bold decisions and they are very dedicated. Havinga sense of passion seems to drive people to be able to come up with incredible ideas.

Q. What allows NASA to be an innovative organization?

A. NASA is more bureaucratic than it used to be and there is a thicker rulebook, but the momentum that carries them is still this incredible sense of mission. If you go to any NASA center and ask someone what program they are working on and how theyfeel about it, nine times out of 10 you are going to get this very excited civil servant who tells you all about where they are going, how they are getting there, what they hope to find when they get there and why it is important.

The best leaders in the organization are able to own that and let that transferdown to the people who work with them and for them. That includes being able to provide an environment in which innovation can really blossom.

Q. What have been some of the barriers to innovation at NASA?

A. Talk to ten different people at NASA and you would get ten different answers. I think a common frustration is having a program announcement thatthen either gets canceled or underfunded. Sometimes this happens within next years budget appropriation, or often it's when we have a change in the White House.

For instance, the Constellation program was announced back in the early 2000s. They were going to build a new rocket, a new command module and a new lunar landing ship. It was never fully funded because a lot of people outside of NASA primarily were pulling in different directions. Then in 2009, they commissioned a report that said, If you dont put more money into this, its never going to happen because you are just going to keep tinkering with it. So instead of funding it properly, they cut it.

Read the original post:

On Leadership: How NASA keeps innovating