Regarding J. Clay McGuyer's allusion to "the Warehouse of Death" for #defenseinnovation ...I think this is a contender to replace the infamous Valley of Death. The latter suggests that if we (small tech companies) only had enough water and supplies, we could make it across. In other words, the Valley analogy implies that small tech companies have some (some) ability to control their own destiny. But if you end up in the Warehouse, on the other hand, water and supplies may just extend your shelf life in purgatory. This opinion piece by Jason Stack was in my reading pile -- https://lnkd.in/dAcrZiHN -- and in my opinion provides very valuable insights into achieving the level and quality of innovation the US needs to prevail in any future near-peer (or even non-near peer) conflict. He expands on these four points: 1. Solve problems, don’t meet requirements. 2. Protect, incentivize and embed the innovators. 3. Experiment early, incrementally and only against actual hypotheses. 4. Optimize for discovery and speed, not for efficiency or scale. I thought Jason's opinion piece provided valuable insights and applications for achieving the type of truly disruptive (a la Replicator) innovation we all claim to value. Sure, handy for the DoD to have a warehouse of shelves to pull tech from when they decide they need it. But to Jason's point, the warehouse approach may not serve the endgame of unleashing the type of disruptive innovation process we need to win the war.
Failure = Value. Another great week of #defenseinnovation. A new teammate asked me this week, “How do you know so much about technology?” And when I answered, she looked at me like I was crazy. “Failure,” was my answer. So I had to explain… When you find a technology and try to get it adopted in DOD and it fails, you always remember it. And, eventually, it comes back around. When it does, you say “I know how we could do that!” Then, someone says, “How do you know so much about technology?” Failing fast is a term thrown around often. It is of great value. I had an idea this week we had to kill. It was a great idea, but we couldn’t get any organizations to support the technology. It wasn’t viable with all the other things the department needed to do today. So what happened next? That idea had to go on the shelf. People also talk about the “technology shelf,” but it is a real thing. When I was at JIDO, I had a list of “shelved” programs. If we needed them, we’d pull them out and deloy them. I firmly believe the one we put on the shelf this week will come back. The good thing is, the more you innovate, the bigger the shelf gets. Which brings me to my point. Building a National Security Innovation Base does not happen overnight. It takes a lot of failure to start to build successes. But, the longer we work at it, the better we get. So, we have to remember Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), AFWERX, NavalX, ARCWERX, SOFWERX, and all our DODx teammates have to work together, and share the successes, but also the failures. Things we put on the shelf are not really failures. We have to move on to the next thing. Just know, they will come back around.
