> How can we innovate successfully in a heavily regulated industry?
>
> In our case, the US Environmental Protection Agency regulates the content
> and methods used in a risk assessment.... It is not unfair to say that the
> Agency' manuals rely on 8th-grade science...
>
> As an MIT graduate, I want to raise the standard of practice and innovate
> on behalf of our clients...... I have published 27 papers in refereed
> journals describing a wide variety of new methods to do risk assessments,
> but the US EPA has pretty much rejected them all.....
>
> Privately, the US EPA reviewers agree that our methods are correct... but
> they cannot accept the new ideas on site-specific risk assessments because
> the new methods are not in the Agency's manuals.... and they have
> basically no interest in updating their manuals.....
Given the "reinventing governnment" theme of the veep, I am surprised by
this. (well, only moderately surprised :-) I would approcah the problem
from a number of perspectives:
1. Talk to an implementor, find out the WIIFM (what's in it for me) for
that person, and see what that person's objections are on a personal
level.
2. Talk to an agency administrator, and ask the same questions- the wiifm
and the personal objections. (Do the assessors need re-training?, is
there a paucity of funds, do the senior people not understand the
science, are they concerned this will cost business more money?)
There are ways to apply pressure re appropriate govt committees and
letters to the Globe, Journal, etc.
3. Talk to your clients or potential clients- why should they want you
to do this? Will this cost them less $ to monitor?
It seems as if you've got part of the story- the technical part- and you
need to find out the rest of the story.
If I've been unclear, send me private email, and I'll clarify. Good luck!
Johanna
-------------------------------------------------------------
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
jr@world.std.com URL:http://world.std.com/~jr/
Management Consulting for High Technology Product Development