The Defense Innovation Ecosystem has begun to mature over the last five years. There are organizations such as AFWERX focused on grass-roots innovation at the wing level, providing internships and fellowships to immerse Airmen in Innovation, and providing the financial infrastructure for industry to bring best of breed to the DAF for adoptions.
The Defense Innovation Unit is aggregating DoD requirements and engaging with industry with acquisition tools that mirror business-to-business agreements to move fast and accelerate technology development and adoption. There are Partnership Intermediaries such as STRIKEWERX and SOFWERX providing a front door to engage with industry in a unique way to identify pathways and solutions for government consideration. Software factories such as Kessel Run, BESPIN, and Space Camp have emerged to quickly develop and deliver software to the warfighter using modern development practices. Tools such as GAIN, VISION, and HOLODECK have created better tracking and visibility of innovation initiatives and allowed leadership to align funding to high-priority efforts.
Tesseract is addressing innovation for the broader logistics community from the HAF level, and Project ARC is sending engineers to bases across the DAF to quickly develop and deliver solutions to hard problems. Collectively, we are igniting the passion of the warfighter to identify and champion innovation. Innovation cells must begin to self-organize and create pathways for efficient “hand-offs” between organizations to accelerate change.
AF CyberWorx is an innovation lab focused on optimizing products, processes, and policies using Human-Centered Design best practices. We link our innovation process with a range of acquisition instruments and agreements such as Other Transaction Authority, Commercial Solutions Openings, SBIR/STTR, Broad Agency Announcements, and Cooperative Research and Development Agreements to accelerate prototyping and development. We can help DAF units solve problems quickly and accelerate adoption.
