I think it is a terribly difficult problem. My personal solution is to have a better “day job” for this kind of intermediary function. The goal of UpStart, for example, is to have people in many different companies working to find budding entrepreneurs (see Best Buy’s recent work with us in BusinessWeek) and back very-short-term projects to let them prove the business they want to build.

That’s a hard but straightforward task: “Find talent, vet projects, run projects, report results.”

But it is also the perfect role for an intermediary. It doesn’t have a role in direction-setting of the company (which is the one key no-no for an intermediary with access to knowledge from inside other firms), but it puts the intermediary in direct contact with emerging innovative intentions of people inside the client companies.

The dream for UpStart is to see many companies sending three-to-six teams of 3-4 people each season (we run a maximum of two seasons a year), all working here in the incubator in Silicon Valley – 10 weeks of living together, getting to know each other, building relationships across company lines. The projects themselves will remain private and not shared across company lines, but the people will be here building cross-company relationships that hopefully will pay dividends over time.

Imagine, after a few years of this, one day the UpStart manager inside Boeing and the UpStart manager inside Best Buy get together and say, “Hey, here’s a project that would be terrific if Boeing put two interns in and Best Buy put two interns in. We run it for 10 weeks, and if it goes nowhere…well, it was always about talent development to begin with, and it was only 10 weeks…” While this sort of thing would still present all the old problems of “who owns what,” the hope is that the talent mission, short-term framework, and track record of growing trust over years will create a safer environment for companies to engage each other in this way.

So with UpStart, instead of going to the firms and saying “we have found a potential connection with another company”, UpStart managers (note we don’t call them intermediaries) would be able to say, “Hey boss, here’s a 10 week project we should consider doing with Boeing, and here’s the team we should have work on it.”

My thoughts turn to starting, developing, and keeping these entities going. Enough of the right people need to believe in them and support them.

Though, isn’t the necessary secrecy a real Catch 22 that exists for many groups who help cutting edge development? Especially when the development pipeline or “results” may take years and years – as it is with Aerospace, Energy, and Pharma.

And outside of faith, how can businesses or governments continue to fund groups or agencies when there isn’t the kind of “in your face” trumpeting like there is when dealing with less secret programs?

Is there a difference in how a private entity can resolve this paradox (like consultants who work in this area) versus a government entity?

In your experience, how can these exchanges work around the secrecy problem and still promote their success to marshal and maintain support?

Carl