The world marvels at the scientific successes of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). But behind each success is a mound of failure and DARPA accepts failure as the price of success.

An eye-opening report just released reveals why DARPA has achieved its reputation as probably the smartest smart military laboratory in the world. "Failure tolerance" is one reason. Another is that your average DARPA employee won't last more than five years on the job.

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It's "obsolescence by design" since DARPA seems to believe employment longevity breeds an orthodoxy that kills the creativity it strives to develop in its employees, especially its program managers charged with bringing some of the most outlandish ideas to life.

DARPA's acceptance of failure seems to have led to some of its huge successes. DARPA gave one of its biggest awards to an employee whose high-speed rocket project failed.

Failure is anticipated since employees are immediately challenged to do the impossible.

"If half the people don't respond to a publicly-announced challenge saying it's impossible, we haven't set the bar high enough," said Phillip Alvelda, a DARPA program manager.

"No idea is too crazy. The reaction is never, 'That's impossible.' We say, 'How would you do that? How would you get there? Write down the steps,'" said Barry Pallota, deputy director of the biological technologies office.

DARPA is an incredibly small organization for the immense size of the achievements it makes public. The agency only has some 220 employees in six offices throughout the U.S., including its headquarters in Virginia. Most of these people hold their jobs for just four or five years.

As a consequence of this evergreen policy, DARPA has an employee attrition rate of 25 percent a year, which is high considering the turnover rate in most U.S. industries is 15 percent.

The fact an employee knows how long he's expected to last seems to goad people into doing more in the borrowed time they have. Their identification cards also show the date they'll be fired, which forces an employee to shape up or else.

TagsDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, Virginia