Apologies for the crickets. More news about PARPA coming soon — there’s lots going on but nothing post-worthy … yet. In the meantime, I frequently get the question “What’s the difference between an FRO and PARPA?” so it seems worth exploring. Warning
It seems like the major differences arise from the different maturity levels of the initial ideas and the consequences thereof. So I wonder how are the later stages of a PARPA different from an FRO?
(I guess one difference is that in a PARPA you already have a strong team with relevant experience that did the earlier work and the PM is expected to be much more familiar with the domain and different ways to navigate the project. )
So one could consider decoupling the "two stages" of a PARPA - first have a PM working on funding exploratory research on a given goal, then pass that over to an FRO incubator once there is a fleshed out project.
How to think about the differences between FROs and private ARPA programs
It seems like the major differences arise from the different maturity levels of the initial ideas and the consequences thereof. So I wonder how are the later stages of a PARPA different from an FRO?
(I guess one difference is that in a PARPA you already have a strong team with relevant experience that did the earlier work and the PM is expected to be much more familiar with the domain and different ways to navigate the project. )
So one could consider decoupling the "two stages" of a PARPA - first have a PM working on funding exploratory research on a given goal, then pass that over to an FRO incubator once there is a fleshed out project.