The Role of Experimentation Campaigns in the Air Force Innovation Life Cycle (2016) / Chapter Skim
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2 Experimentation for Innovation: Best Practices in Highly Innovative Organizations
2 Experimentation for Innovation: Best Practices in Highly Innovative Organizations
Pages 12-47
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From page 12... ...
Government Accountability Office, 2006, Best Practices: Stronger Practices Needed to Improve DOD Technology Transition Processes, GAO-06-883. 1 Private organizations interviewed include Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Corning, Motive Space Systems, TransAstra, Lightspeed Venture Partners, MITRE Corporation, Leidos, DSI International Inc., Technovation Inc., and the Institute for Defense Analyses.
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areas, and prospective technologies are identified that hold promise FIGURE 2-1 Process flow for technology insertion. NOTE: Innovation is the product of a stream of activities (or stages of an innovation life cycle)
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Typically, commitment to a product line is required at this stage, and product line managers begin to be engaged in tracking the technology. For the Develop stage, there still are significant risks, but they are much reduced from the level accepted in the Explore stage, and success is clearly anticipated.
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From page 15... ...
; and schedule growth (–31 percent) ."3 The BENS, GAO, and NRC reports conclude similarly that development of and experimentation with prototypes should be accomplished as a means of refining requirements, gaining customer buy-in on the value of the product, reducing the risk otherwise inherent in introducing new technologies, and fostering exploration of disruptive innovations.
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From page 16... ...
As one would expect, these organizations included a number of high-tech start ups, Silicon Valley firms, and older firms that had been able to sustain innovation over decades. One of the central themes of this report is that the USAF knows how to innovate through experimentation and experimentation campaigns -- the key is not learning something new, so much as it is achieving more widespread use of what is already known and in use in isolated pockets across the Service.
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The thumbnail sketches of these organizations document that the practices found in other highly innovative organizations have clear relevance in the USAF. An exem plary innovative Special Operations organization, U.S.
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DEFINING THE PROBLEM Given that a critical part of solving any problem is first clearly defining it, the committee carefully considered how highly innovative organizations look at the challenges of innovation through experimentation.
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As depicted in Figure 2-2, the development process starts with innovative ideas and future operating concepts. However, the journey from R&D stages to deployment and normal production is difficult and often perilous.
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They may be end users looking for better solutions to operating problems or for lower-cost solutions. Either way, highly innovative organizations understand the difficulty of crossing the valley of death 5 D.J.
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Innovations that improve these operations are called sustaining innovations since they strengthen normal production. Innovations that
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threaten these operations are called disruptive innovations since they require the organization to rethink and reshape its normal production.6 Normal production is therefore often opposed to disruptive innovation since it threatens the ability of the organization to fulfill its mission of smooth day-to day operation. On the other hand, disruptive innovation is often critical to the organization overall because it is often essential to competitiveness and keeping the organization relevant.
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From page 23... ...
These funds are used to address developments that either span multiple product divisions or that are disruptive to an existing corporate product line. This arrangement reflects the belief that product divisions should not be expected to ag gressively pursue development of a new product that disrupt their existing business, what we have termed the normal production organization.
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From page 24... ...
USAF'S LONG HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTATION CAMPAIGNS Over its nearly seven-decade existence, the Air Force has run multiple R&D e fforts that would, in today's terminology, be considered experimentation cam paigns. Perhaps the best known of these is the so-called X-series research vehicle program, which dates back to 1944, before the establishment of an independent USAF.
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E x p e r i m e n tat i o n for I n n o va t i o n 25 FIGURE 2-3 Early X-series in August 1953. SOURCE: NASA photo E-2889, August 4, 1953.
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26 Role of E x p e r i m e n tat i o n C a m pa i g n s in the A i r F o rc e I n n o v a t i o n L i f e C y c l e FIGURE 2-4 X-15A-2 being launched from a B-52. SOURCE: NASA photo EC68-1889, 1967.
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From page 27... ...
The wisdom and success of that effort was evident in the 43-day Gulf War air campaign, where the F-117 cracked open the multilayered and redundant Iraqi integrated air defense system, then the most formidable the world had seen, enabling conventional attackers to operate essentially at will across the Iraqi and Kuwaiti theater of operations from the opening night of the war onwards.
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From page 28... ...
SOURCE: U.S. Air Force photo, available at San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive, Catalog #10_0016119.
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Experimentation campaigns are nothing more than a logical plan for se quencing efforts intended to answer key questions. These questions generally test assumptions (Can we support this load with a carbon strut weighing only 4 pounds?
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And yet, as will be show in Chapter 3, the use of experimentation campaigns to drive the pace of innovation in the Air Force is simply not at the scale or the scope needed. The committee's research indicates that this is in large part attributable to a very low tolerance for failure, and the next section looks at how highly innovative organizations distin guish between different types of failures.
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From page 31... ...
The highly innovative organizations studied have come to terms with the distinction between a failure and an Edison. In fact, many of them embraced "smart" failures as an essential piece of their innovation process.
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Valley of death: In general, all organizations face a valley of death problem when it comes to innovation. The best innovators have found a way to address this by balancing the normal production organization's desire to avoid disruption against the overall organization's need for disruptive innovation.12 As will be seen in Chapter 3, there is an opportunity for the USAF to improve the way it addresses this challenge.
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, this Innovation Catalyst often carried a title such as chief innovation officer or chief technology officer (CTO) .15 13 Examples of the highly innovative organizations studied include the following: LightSpeed Venture Partners, MITRE Corporation, Science & Technology Policy Institute, Institute for Defense Analyses, Leidos, Corning Inc., Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, DSI International, Inc., Technovation, Inc., and U.S.
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This is essential, for as will be seen, a primary responsibility of the innovation driver is to ensure that innovation is tied to the broader organizational strategy and mission. In larger organizations, it was common to find this two-part pattern: a named senior Innovation Catalyst with (1)
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Senior Corporate Level Leaders InnovaƟon IC Catalyst Normal ProducƟon OrganizaƟon Senior Senior Leaders Leaders Division Level InnovaƟon InnovaƟon IC Catalyst IC Catalyst Normal ProducƟon Normal ProducƟon OrganizaƟon OrganizaƟon Senior Senior Leaders Leaders InnovaƟon InnovaƟon IC Catalyst IC Catalyst Normal ProducƟon OrganizaƟon Normal ProducƟon OrganizaƟon OperaƟng Unit Level FIGURE 2-9 Innovation Catalysts are often replicated across a more complex organization in a fractal like pattern.
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CONCEPT OF OPERATION Across the highly innovative organizations it studied, the committee found that Innovation Catalysts, regardless of their actual titles, worked under very similar concepts of operation. While the details varied from organization to organization, the underlying principles were fundamentally similar, as follows: • Overseeing a portfolio of innovation efforts.
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In other words, it is not difficult to find examples of metrics work ing to suppress innovation. The committee suspects this is why innovative organizations have a very cau tious approach to putting in place the same sort of metrics and scorecards one sees in many normal production organizations.
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. • Strong experimentation campaigns -- trength of customer interaction (path to a crystallizing customer16)
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The direct connection between senior leadership and innovation was also essential to overcome resistance to innova tion and protect innovation efforts from the "antibodies" found throughout the larger normal production organization. (See earlier discussion about innovations, especially disruptive innovations, being vulnerable to attack from the normal production organization as they traveled across the valley of death.)
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This organizational arrangement is more likely to produce sustaining innovations rather than disruptive innovations. Consequently, the pushback from the normal production organization may be less, but the risk is that this arrangement will produce fewer products, ideas, and processes that challenge the status quo.
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-- Strong Interaction of -- Innovation Center may be Innovation Center with subsumed into normal Senior normal production production perspective. Leaders organization.
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Specifically, they pro vide funding and facilities to enable their workforce to design and execute experi mental investigations ranging from prototypes to simulations to A/B testing in a secure "sandbox." In the introduction, the committee made the point that the USAF does not have a space in which to innovate because the normal production organi zation has established its dominance over much of the organization. The notion of a sandbox is a safe place for the small groups to test out innovative ideas and safely carry out much-needed experimentation campaigns.
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From page 43... ...
In the highly innovative organizations that were studied, not only could these tools be seen at work, but their use is also carefully orchestrated as part of planning and executing well-conceived experimentation campaigns. Makerspaces Also known as hackerspaces, fab labs, Countermeasures Hands-On Program (CHOP)
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.21 Partnerships Several of the highly innovative organizations the committee studied stressed the importance of partnerships in innovation. These ranged from close working relationships with customers and end users, to collaboration with other organiza tions on technology sharing and co-development of new solutions.
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Spacecom even employs non-DoD personnel who have demonstrated innovational and improvisational skills to look for adversarial ways to counter space capabilities. PEOPLE AND CULTURE In its examination of highly innovative organizations, the committee was repeatedly reminded of the importance of people and culture.
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• Education and training. The most effective innovative organizations ensure that personnel receive education and training in experimentation and innovation principles, practices, and techniques.
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E x p e r i m e n tat i o n for I n n o va t i o n 47 systems in highly innovative organizations are aligned with the goal of innovation and are structured and operated to make experimentation and innovation easier. Detailing these systems is beyond the scope of this report, but this subject will be considered with current practices in the USAF, the subject of Chapter 3.23 23 See Appendix C for a list of speakers and organizations interviewed by the committee.
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