LOOKING BACK TO MOVE AHEAD


the qualifier “rapid” right in their name. Tis approach of embracing rapid change can, at times, create natural tensions between maintaining core competen- cies within conventional approaches and quickly adapting to a changing environ- ment. What OEF and OIF taught us is the importance for the Army S&T com- munity to be able to do both of these things to ensure long-term success. Army S&T must maintain core competencies in key areas to preserve conventional over- match strength but also must be able to have portions of their organization unen- cumbered to quickly adapt to the rapidly changing, fail-fast approach used in asymmetric warfare.


PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER NVESD is actively working to apply these three lessons to create an innovation-rich


environment to support the Army’s efforts in addressing strategic land power initia- tives such as the unconventional uses of explosive hazards to counter U.S. military superiority. One example of an innova- tion activity is a crowdsourcing initiative completed in 2014 that NVESD executed for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology in partnership with the Counter Terrorism Technical Support Office headed by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low- Intensity Conflict.


Tis effort leveraged InnoCentive, a crowdsourcing company that accepts


“challenge problems” in a range of techni- cal areas and gives cash awards for the best solutions to solvers who meet the challenge criteria. NVESD executed two challenges


focused on detecting in-road explosive hazards as well as explosively formed pene- trators. Tis initiative used all three of the lessons learned identified above: establish first principles, inject orthogonal thinking and demonstrate willingness to change.


To begin, NVESD organized a multi- laboratory team to distill the fundamental core elements that characterize these long- term challenges for asymmetric threats. In doing so, NVESD identified that, at a root level, one of the main challenges was in being able to detect and character- ize man-made objects from the natural environment. Using this first-principles approach, NVESD discovered similari- ties between the Army’s military problem and challenges facing the commercial autonomous vehicle industry. Similar to SpaceX’s experience, by taking a fresh look at the fundamentals, NVESD was able to identify new opportunities for exploring cost-effective innovations.


Tis iterative process took several weeks to complete and was critical to ensuring a sound foundation upon which to build the prize-based challenges—in essence, it made sure that the Army generated exter- nal innovation in response to the right questions. Narrowly defined problem statements may result in too few responses by


unintentionally forcing


toward a subjective viewpoint regarding the nature of the solution. Similar risks also apply to problem statements that are too broad. Careful work was required at the start to identify those portions of the overall problem that were most appropri- ate and suited for this process.


CONFLICT ZONE


Innovation, by definition, creates organizational conflict because it challenges convention. The military conflicts of the past 13 years exemplified how those organizations that could positively and rapidly embrace change provided significant advantages for themselves. (U.S. Army photo)


NVESD broke down the problems into their first principles and posted them on InnoCentive in a manner that obfuscated their source and was devoid of their mili- tary context. Tis helped NVESD ensure the widest possible dissemination of the


78


“solvers”


Army AL&T Magazine


April–June 2015


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