In my last article, I shared some thoughts on defining success in innovation programs, and ways we might do that with a more holistic understanding of elements of innovation and innovation culture. At the beginning of that article, I said I would challenge three 3 things:
- Are we defining success appropriately?
- Do our expectations match our manning?
- Do our expectations match our resourcing?
Do our expectations match our manning?
Have we aligned, assigned, or hired enough people to make the impact we're aiming for? Do we understand the pain points and what it will take to solve them?
As I've delved deeper into this challenge, I've realized that it often boils down to expectations and clarity. We will eventually discuss manpower, but let's first establish the foundation of the problem we're addressing.
In the realm of defense or federal innovation, identifying the specific problem or problems to solve is critical. It's equally important for leaders and teams to recognize which issues they are not addressing. From this understanding, we can ensure that our expectations for what the team can accomplish are realistic.
Is your program focused on outreach? Perhaps it's aimed at easing the market entry for commercial companies or addressing challenges in market research. However, it's unlikely that your outreach efforts alone are resolving the core issues associated with technology transition. While you may facilitate entry for these companies, overcoming this hurdle remains a time-consuming challenge.
Do your metrics reflect the problem you're addressing?
Once you have clarity on what your program does and does not tackle, it's crucial to revisit your metrics. For example, if your program helps resolve challenges with ideation or outreach, "transition" should not be a primary metric. Although it's beneficial to celebrate transition successes when they occur, your metrics should directly correlate to the primary issue. The number of new applicants to federal award programs is a suitable metric for outreach efforts, but transition rates are not.
Staffing Against Expectations
I've touched on this before: most innovation programs do little to address the challenges of transition, yet they are often evaluated based on transition rates. Transition is a manpower-intensive process. There are many factors that drive transition success, but I will highlight two critical ones: Relationships and Timing.
Relationships cannot be fast-tracked; they take time to build. For a technology to transition successfully, multiple stakeholders must work together in alignment. Innovation programs often yield sub-element innovations that need integration, major innovations that replace incumbent solutions, or (rarely) entirely new concepts that require their own programs of record. All these efforts necessitate coordinated action from numerous individuals, most of whom may not maintain their focus on innovation—this is where additional personnel are essential. Every program manager knows that effective transition involves more than a few introductions and some SBIR dollars; it's about sales, persuasion, influence, constant follow-ups, phone calls, updates, and site visits. It requires substantial manpower to execute effectively.
Timing is another crucial element. Success depends on someone tracking all relevant programs related to an innovation and capitalizing on opportunities to explore technology integrations, free up budget, or manage training. This, again, takes significant time.
When we established AFWERX, we requested 30 individuals whose sole responsibility was to triage projects coming through SBIR, highlight problems or innovations at Spark Cells, and connect these to relevant stakeholders across the acquisition enterprise. This was to ensure the right introductions were made to increase the odds of success. Although resources were never abundant, the team has made commendable efforts to close this gap through a rigorous memorandum process. Despite the complaints and challenges, it's clear that this process was designed to improve a company's odds of success and reduce the likelihood of distractions.
DIU’s long-standing practice of only allowing sponsoring agencies that contribute their own funding is another targeted and smart approach.
No one cares like you do.
While I think such practices are smart, I believe they’re rarely enough. Our innovation programs make the mistakes that most great entrepreneurs make - we think everyone else cares as much about our mission as we do. The reality is that they don’t. This is true across the government, as well. It’s not that they’re lazy, bad, or unintelligent. They simply have their own piece of mission assigned to them that captures their attention, focus, and is prioritized in their time.
Many great entrepreneurs solve this problem through process optimization. The examples of AFWERX’s memorandum process and DIU’s problem selection process are excellent. The challenge in throughput from those programs is that there isn’t a clear process. If I have a company that makes money on running webinars, I can make a process for that which works every time.
The same cannot be said for technology transition. There’s not even one single ideal flow, there are several. And the reality is, the biggest part of the ideal is that they’re baked into the program plan from the beginning. Because there is no one process for technology transition, to really succeed here, you need to have a team dedicated to the manual process of relationship and timing alignment.
So before you cancel your innovation program and jump to the next “sexy” concept for how to get great innovation to the field, ask yourself if you’ve really given the resources to the non-sexy activities that are paramount to meeting your goals.
So there it is. In my opinion, the elephant in the room of defense innovation programs. We want the diet pill, we don’t want to fund and resource the hard stuff. Moving people is hard. Getting funding for manpower is hard. Getting billets is hard. Convincing others to give up their most valuable assets is HARD. Instead, we focus on quick and superficial wins. Then when money does come, we are high on those successes and fund more of that stuff rather than the stuff that matters to our ultimate goals. That’s fine if you’re willing to adjust your goals and metrics. If you’re not, don’t just move onto the next fad. Do the hard work.
I believe that this community is capable. If we REALLY reflect on the transformation, the conversations, the wins that have evolved in the last decade, it’s amazing. Conversations that were rising as novel and often scoffed at when I started in this space in 2016 are now common vernacular. We ARE making progress, but we need real commitment to win.
Your Fan,
