BRAINPOWER SURGE


FIGURE 3 Year Patent Awards PATENTLY PRODUCTIVE


Over the past five years, ARDEC received 153—22 percent—of the 691 patent awards issued to the Army, a higher percentage than at any time in ARDEC’s recent history. While ARDEC does not require inventors to use the IDEA program or record their ideas in its database, 33 of the 36 patent applications that ARDEC filed in the past two quarters were based on ideas from the database. (SOURCE: ARDEC)


2008 23


2009 38


2010 30


2011 31


2012 41


THE INNOVATION PIPELINE IS ROBUST, WITH ALMOST 300 IDEAS MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH THE IDEA DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. WITHOUT THE IDEA PROGRAM, THOSE 300 IDEAS WOULD NOT BE RECORDED, DEVELOPED OR TRACKED UNLESS PART OF AN OFFICIAL PROJECT.


Te IDEA program minimizes financial risks by providing the inventor with the resources needed to further incubate his or her concept, before launching a more substantial project. Given that some of the ideas inevitably will fail, the ARDEC organization thus becomes more accus- tomed to accepting the moderate hazards associated with innovation.


One example of how the process works is the Wireless Universal Fire Control (WULF) concept that arose from one of our innovation hubs and, with assistance from the IDEA program, became a Sec- tion 219-funded Technology Exploration, Exploitation and Examination (TEX3) project. Once the TEX3 project report showed it to be feasible, WULF became an Army 6.2 applied research program. WULF is now being considered for insertion into a program of record under Program Executive Office (PEO) Ammu- nition’s product manager for guided precision munitions and mortar systems.


On a different occasion, in November 2011, an ARDEC employee who had served in the U.S. Marine Corps con- tacted an innovation catalyst and asked,


“Did you know that 15 percent of our Soldiers are left-handed … and all the Army’s hand grenades are right-handed?” Ten he produced sketches of his new


90 Army AL&T Magazine


ambidextrous grenade design, for which a patent is now pending. Such common- sense, practical innovation is the purpose of the IDEA program’s bottom-up path.


Te top-down path, by contrast, starts when one of ARDEC’s senior manag- ers, clients or government entities issues a “request


for innovation.” An IDEA


manager formats the request for internal or external release and organizes collab- orative workshops to address the problem. Participants include the problem owners, top ARDEC inventors and subject-matter experts. Te search for solutions may be internal, external or a combination of both.


PROMISING RESULTS Eventually, the success of the IDEA pro- gram will be measured by the number and quality of deployed systems it helped cre- ate. But for now, leading indicators such as patent counts and idea metrics are positive.


Over the past five years, ARDEC received 153 patent awards of the 691 total issued to the Army—representing 22 percent, a higher percentage than at any time in ARDEC’s recent history. (See Figure 3.) Last year alone, ARDEC received 41 patents, or 24 percent of the Army total of 172 patents. Relative to our workforce, this translates into 14.6 patents per 1,000 employees per year.


October–December 2013


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196