For government leaders, this means a fundamental change in the way we work with private enterprise. Industry faces different constraints than government organizations. While companies are answerable to public shareholders or private inves- tors, they can be more agile and en- trepreneurial. They can more quickly integrate new technological develop- ment from across the commercial enterprise into their work. They have the expertise to produce at scale and move quickly—something the govern- ment struggles to do. That said, government organiza- tions have unique strengths. They have vast understanding of the threat, and they own the mission. They have well-understood operational needs that endure for decades. They are not competitors with private enterprises, and they can contribute to basic re- search. So, while government orga- nizations are not built to innovate, they must be sophisticated in both spurring and consuming innovation. Therefore, our best solution is to foster enhanced partnerships with a quick feedback loop between govern- ment and industry that capitalizes on our respective strengths to accelerate the uptake of new–new ideas.
The first and most essential step to leading innovation is to resist the urge to use “tried and true” processes. If you do what you have always done, you should not expect new results. We have to recognize the ways in which our usual practices restrain us. Do not start with a detailed concept of operations—it will be anchored to existing thought, processes, struc- tures, and capabilities. Do not start with overly detailed requirements— they will stifle options. Do not start with a risk assessment—it will skew toward the knowns and inflate the risk of uncertainty. Instead, we must develop and mechanize a process for identifying, implementing, and iterating ideas in miniature. “Complex systems that work” evolve from “simple systems that work.” Start small. Find a way to harness a new idea in a limited way, prove it works, and scale from there. The system of government bureau- cracy is a powerful one. You cannot fight it on every front, but you can test its assumptions. If we can bring a new–new idea into the system and demonstrate its value, the idea be- comes more familiar, and we can start to leverage the power of the system to implement innovation rather than to reject it.
Moreover, we must learn to think horizontally, not vertically. Many great ideas fail to take root because they lack support, and they wither on the vine. It is not enough to trial an innovation within a single use-case for a narrow objective—you must prove broad applicability to win general sup- port and tilt the cost-benefit equation in favor of innovation. The ideas that drove the Industrial Revolution were not constrained just to textiles or me- talworking—they influenced every as- pect of society from transportation to communication to societal structures. In the same way, we should not overcommit resources to develop- ing an exquisite artificial intelligence for real-time change detection in the 490–575 nanometer band from low- Earth orbit. Instead, we should explore artificial intelligence more broadly for the enhancement of human decision- making. An idea that applies across many contexts and can be tailored to various purposes is an idea that can inspire real change. We cannot con- trol the outcome, but we can man- age conditions to make innovation more likely. So, it is incumbent on us as lead- ers to lift our heads above the parapet and make connections with coun- terparts in other mission areas and sectors. We must talk across agen- cies and be willing to share and col- laborate. Money is always a finite re- source, and time is doubly so. We can be so much more effective when we pool our limited resources in pursuit of common gain. In May 2024, the Space Force al- located $40 million for commercial space services. Specifically, we es- tablished a pilot program—Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking (TacSRT)—to create a mar- ketplace for commercial analytics and data fusion in Earth observation data. This was a first-of-its-kind initiative meant to complement the exquisite work of the Intelligence Community with unclassified operational planning products delivered on tactical relevant timelines. We did not start with a
U.S. Air Force air advisors assigned to the 409th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron brief the Niger Armed Forces, also known as Forces Armées Nigeriennes (FAN), before training exercises at the FAN compound on Nigerien Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger, July 10, 2019. The FAN learned how to efficiently and safely clear buildings. Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Devin Boyer
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