ARDEC, in partnership with PEOs and other stakeholders, has also won 34 of 100 Army Greatest Invention Awards since the program’s inception in 2002, and 10 out of 20 in the past two years.
Te 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 proj- ect. Te ARDEC workforce is now more aware that innovation is a dimension to consider in everything ARDEC does. While ARDEC does not require inven- tors 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 grew out of ideas from the database.
Te degree of support that the IDEA pro- gram provides to patent initiatives varies widely, underscoring the program’s role as a facilitator of innovation, not an “owner” of patents or development programs. For example, one of the main activities of the IDEA program is to conduct innova- tion training classes and ideation sessions. Teir output often results in patents that require no further assistance from the program. Tat said, most of the patents filed today benefited from some degree of help from the IDEA program.
“Te IDEA program provides enterprise- level processes and capabilities
that
lubricate the innovation engine that existed within the organization, with very promising emerging results,” said Dr. Gerardo J. Meléndez, ARDEC direc- tor. “Tat is not surprising, as what I hear from the ARDEC workforce is that their basic motivators are the desire to support the warfighter and to innovate. Te IDEA program provides an excellent venue to focus efforts that meet both motivators.”
LESSONS LEARNED Along the way, the IDEA program overcame many obstacles. Innovation demands change, and change is rarely easy. But change happens, if incre- mentally, and a climate that favors innovation in the workplace helps to accelerate that change. Among the many lessons learned:
Te size of a program depends on available talent, not on the number of employees. Innovation programs must reflect the volume of ideas that a given enterprise is likely to gener- ate. ARDEC, as well as many similar DOD facilities, is working closely with a wide array of partners in an intricate and balanced defense and aerospace ecosystem. Most of ARDEC’s engi- neers occupy positions related to project monitoring and testing. Only a minority of our personnel are directly involved
in technology state-of-the-art science: and engineering tasks,
where 90 percent of all innovations develop. Teir number determined the size of the IDEA program. Still, 10 per- cent of all ideas come from unexpected sources, and they need to be equally well serviced.
Not all “best practices” are equally rele- vant. When it comes to innovation, the best practices of organizations
struc-
turally similar to ours were the most useful. In our case, ARDEC is a value- added complex systems integrator, similar to Raytheon Co. or Lockheed Martin Corp. Teir research and devel- opment operations and policies parallel ARDEC’s, so their approaches to inno- vation are of direct interest to us. We learned less from consumer product companies such as Google Inc., Apple Inc. or even 3M Co.
All successful programs are funda- mentally top-down. Although IDEA supports both top-down and bottom-up
innovation, even the bottom-up path depends heavily on top-level guidance. Inventors’ ideas can be either random or targeted to a problem of interest; a well-run innovation program commu- nicates clearly to all potential inventors where the problems are so that they can apply their talent to topics of interest to the enterprise.
CONCLUSION Tere are still people we need to reach and new resources we need to provide. Te main goals for our next- generation IDEA 2.0 program, due to start deployment this fall, are to train a critical mass of ARDEC managers to become part-time innovation catalysts and to make available secure, open innovation resources and practices to all ARDEC employees.
Te desired result ARDEC innovators
is to enable more to effectively miti-
gate potential shortages of technologies critical to the Army. We are not at equi- librium yet!
For more information, contact the author at 973-724-7215 or
andrei.n.cernasov.
civ@mail.mil; or go to
http://www.ardec.
army.mil/about/ideaprogram/. Also, read about ARDEC’s support for patenting inventions by cadets of the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA), at
http://www.army.mil/article/103448/ Picatinny_supports_patenting_West_ Point_cadet_inventions/.
DR. ANDREI CERNASOV, associate director for innovation at ARDEC’s Muni- tions Engineering and Technology Center, manages ARDEC’s IDEA program. He holds a B.E.E. from the City College of New York and a Ph.D. in physics from the City University of New York. Cernasov holds 30 patents in high-technology areas.
ASC.ARMY.MIL 91
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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