Finding TPOCs During a Funding Round

Technical Point of Contacts occupy a privileged position in contemporary innovation processes. They are often treated as the bridge for industry to meet federal investment requirements. In funding rounds, whether internal or external, TPOCs are expected to reduce uncertainty, demonstrate feasibility, and provide rational justification for the allocation of capital.

Despite their centrality, TPOCs frequently fail to perform this function, and projects quickly lose momentum for future contracts. The prevailing explanation tends to focus on execution quality or stakeholder conservatism. Less attention is paid to a deeper structural problem: many TPOCs lack gravity. They prove something, but do not anchor it to a stakeholder.

Fragility is reinforced by a set of implicit assumptions rarely examined during funding cycles. There is an implicit trust that TPOCs are technically competent by default, automatically aligned with the operational domain, and structurally connected to the project they support. While these assumptions are convenient, they do not reflect real-world operations.

TPOCs Without Gravity

TPOC problems are compounded by the temporary nature of engagement requirements. By definition, many TPOCs are designed to leave a project soon after funding. They are commissioned to answer a narrow question and are structurally allowed, even expected, to detach once that question is answered.

This creates an industry incentive to prove and exit. Teams simply deliver the required artifacts and are not held accountable for the project's evolution. After teams prove feasibility, there is a common pattern of lost connection. All tacit knowledge of the project quickly dissipates. Knowledge transfer may be assumed, but it is rarely engineered. The stakeholder may inherit proof of concept, but not the confidence that sustains investment under uncertainty.

Consequences

These structural characteristics create dissonance between TPOCs and the funding bodies. TPOC teams often operate within innovation, engineering, or exploratory units, while funding authority resides elsewhere. As a result, TPOCs and funders rarely form a working relationship.

The consequences are predictable and affect many innovation projects. Funders are presented with artifacts like demos, metrics, architectures, but lack TPOC ownership narratives or accountability signals. They are asked to trust a proof without trusting a system.

This may explain why champions express unease but are unable to articulate its source. The discomfort is not rooted in the technology itself but in the absence of continuity.

The Structural Insight

TPOCs fail not because they lack insight, but because they do not anchor. Proof without domain legitimacy, ongoing attachment, and capital trust evaporates, becoming informational rather than investable. It reduces uncertainty in theory, but preserves it in practice.

This is not a talent problem. It is a system design problem. Innovation systems that treat TPOCs as disposable artifacts rather than as early institutional commitments generate the same technically credible proofs that cannot survive capital scrutiny. Over time, portfolios accumulate innovation debt, where projects consume attention and resources without ever crossing the threshold into durable investment credibility.

The Question

If TPOCs weren’t treated as temporary experimenters, what would have to change? When TPOCs aren’t given support to build project credibility and shift professional attention towards innovation, serious roadblocks are inadvertently built. 

Answering this question too early may risk constraining exploration to a small group of professional federal TPOCs who may not have the correct technical knowledge. Finding TPOCs who have professional flexibility is crucial to a successful project.