Revolutionary R&D Organization
How autonomous teams of 5 eliminate bureaucracy, embrace failure as essential for progress, and accelerate breakthrough innovation. No administrators. No HR department. No legal department. Pure research velocity.
Five is the optimal size for high-velocity research. Small enough for rapid decision-making without meetings. Large enough for diverse expertise and peer review. Too few lacks perspective. Too many creates coordination overhead.
There are no administrators managing the team. The team manages itself. Need equipment? The team procures it. Need to adjust timeline? The team decides. Need to pivot research direction? The team evaluates and chooses. This eliminates the 6-month lag between "we need this" and "approval granted."
Each group of 5 is completely autonomous within their research domain. They control their budget, set their timeline, design their experiments, hire team members, and publish their findings.
Teams cannot make statements or act outside their role. A biofilm detection team doesn't negotiate commercial licenses. A marine anti-fouling team doesn't commit to hospital deployments. Teams stay in their lane—but within that lane, they have total authority.
We expect failure because failure is essential for progress.
Funding comes from the research center's revenue (commercial licenses + donations). Teams receive quarterly allocations based on:
Teams are NOT funded based on:
This is a Key Performance Indicator reported to the steering committee.
Teams must allocate 10% of their time (approximately 4 hours per week per person) to:
Why This Matters:
Teams submit simple monthly reports to steering committee:
Not compliance checking— this is about ensuring teams invest in their own growth. Teams falling below 10% aren't punished, but steering committee asks "what support do you need to prioritize learning?"
Each group reports to a site steering committee. This committee has ONE purpose: support the teams.
| Aspect | Traditional Hierarchy | Inverted Triangle |
|---|---|---|
| Decision-Making | ✗ Management approval required | ✓ Team consensus drives all decisions |
| Budget Control | ✗ Line-item approvals, purchase orders | ✓ Team sets own budget priorities |
| Hiring | ✗ HR screens, manager approves | ✓ Team hires through consensus |
| Failure Response | ✗ Penalized, funding cut, blame assigned | ✓ Expected, published, learned from |
| Time to Decision | ✗ Weeks to months (approval chains) | ✓ Hours to days (team discussion) |
| Administration Overhead | ✗ 40-60% of budget (HR, legal, management) | ✓ ~5% of budget (minimal facilitation) |
| Research Focus | ✗ Political (pleasing management) | ✓ Scientific (solving problems) |
| Reporting Structure | ✗ Multi-layer hierarchy (5-7 levels) | ✓ Two layers (team → steering committee) |
| Meeting Culture | ✗ Scheduled status updates, presentations | ✓ On-demand, problem-focused |
| Innovation Speed | ✗ Years (bureaucratic friction) | ✓ Months (direct action) |
| Accountability | ✗ Process compliance (did you follow procedure?) | ✓ Results delivery (did you advance the science?) |
| Team Size | ✗ Variable (10-50+ per project) | ✓ Fixed at 5 (optimal coordination) |
Team communication channels grow as n(n-1)/2 where n is team size:
A team of 5 can reach consensus in one conversation. Scaling to larger teams requires:
Small teams build trust faster. Everyone knows everyone deeply. Admitting "I don't know" or "I was wrong" becomes safe. Failure becomes a shared learning experience rather than individual blame.
Runs local food stall. Failed at formal business school. Gets on great with people. Natural organizer who coordinates team needs, manages quarterly funding, connects with other teams. No formal research background—just passionate about clean water.
Former appliance repair technician. Failed at engineering university (couldn't afford to continue). Interest in electronics. Learns circuit design from YouTube and online forums. Enthusiastic problem-solver.
Was a nurse who failed to get into medical school. Interested in microbes after seeing hospital infections kill patients. Learns bacterial culture from online courses. Motivated by preventing deaths she witnessed.
Self-taught programmer who failed multiple job interviews (no CS degree). Built websites for local businesses. Interested in signal processing from YouTube lectures. Writes firmware by reading documentation and trial-and-error.
Worked in construction after Typhoon Haiyan. Failed at architecture school (couldn't afford tuition). Interest in how materials respond to stress. Learns about acoustic coupling by testing different surfaces and reading papers online.
Scenario: Team discovers that biofilm detection works better at 12 Hz than the initially planned 20 Hz. This changes equipment requirements and experimental design.
Traditional Hierarchy Response:
Inverted Triangle Response:
The team spent 3 months trying to detect biofilm through stainless steel. Conclusion: Doesn't work. Reflections from steel attenuate signal too much.
Response: Published findings. Documented why it failed. Shared data with other teams. Pivoted to composite materials where low-frequency penetration works brilliantly. No funding cuts. No blame. Just knowledge gained.
The Ward Effect Technology R&D center in Tacloban, Philippines will operate entirely on the Inverted Triangle model:
5 people disagree fundamentally. Consensus becomes impossible. Progress stalls.
Solution:Team dissolves. Members join other teams or form new teams with better collaborative fit. Steering committee facilitates transition. No forced continuation of dysfunctional teams.
Team burns through quarterly budget in 2 weeks on unnecessary equipment.
Solution:Steering committee reviews budget request for next quarter. Team explains rationale. If justified, funding continues. If wasteful, reduced allocation with requirement to demonstrate learning. Peer pressure from other teams provides accountability.
Biofilm detection team starts making commitments to hospital partners about deployment timelines, stepping outside their research role into commercial operations.
Solution:Steering committee intervenes (their only authority to override). Reminds team of boundary: research and validation only, not commercial deployment commitments. Connects team with appropriate commercial partner or licensing team for external discussions.
Team proves definitively that an approach doesn't work. They publish findings. Other teams avoid wasting time on same approach. The "failed" team pivots to new research question or dissolves and members join other teams. Knowledge advanced. No failure here.
Are you a researcher tired of bureaucracy slowing breakthrough work? The Tacloban R&D center is hiring teams of 5 to work on Ward Effect applications. No managers. No approval chains. Just science.
Express Interest in Joining a Team Support the Research