Crisis Innovation
Researchers at the Duke ISP Lab study how governments, firms, and scientific institutions mobilize and accelerate inventive activity during national and global emergencies. Our work examines how crisis conditions reshape innovation systems—including how governments design and finance R&D in for exigent problems, how public and private actors coordinate under extreme time pressures, and how tools such as secrecy, compulsory controls, and mission-driven contracting influence technological progress. We have particular expertise in understanding how World War II created new models for organizing science, the benefits and hidden costs of these approaches, and how similar strategies have reemerged to tackle modern crises such as COVID-19.