It will come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely follows the goings-on within the Defense Department that DoD and the Services all have a bit (or more than a bit) of a crush on Silicon Valley. In fact, it may be more than a crush: sometimes, it seems to border on obsession.
And why wouldn’t it? DoD used to be the leader in innovation; now, it can’t even remotely keep up. A 10+ year development and acquisition cycle versus Moore’s Law In Action (the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years – it is actually closer to 18 months now). Silicon Valley gets its pick of the top recruits from the top schools every year. Getting a job at Google is more competitive than getting accepted to HARVARD. Silicon Valley and “innovation” seem to be the buzzwords of the year at the Pentagon.
So I want you to imagine the following scene: Dean Kamen, inventor of many, many things, including the Segway, standing in front of an auditorium full of (mostly) Marines. This group has gathered for a meeting entitled Marine Corps Force Development 25 (FD25), and was meant to introduce more innovation into the process. Mr. Kamen was one of the keynotes, and kept the entire audience enthralled for his full allocated time – and then continued for another hour beyond that.
His company, Deka Research, is fairly small (about 500 employees). When large companies want to be innovative, they either bring him in to help “teach” them to be innovative (which he does not really think is possible in a large organization), or (more often), they hire him to do the innovative thinking/product development. He can do this: he is the sole owner of his company, and other than keeping employees paid, he has no obligations to outside parties. The company is not publicly traded, it has no shareholders, etc. And failure certainly does not come with a risk of “death”.
His bottom line: the military should not try to be innovative (as a whole). There is too much at risk. Slow, meticulous, planned, consistent. These words mean death in Silicon Valley; but for members of the military, they provide the best chance of long-term survival. There may be places for innovation within the services, but trying to emulate Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs is both impossible and impractical. And just plain not a good idea.
As the Army (and DoD) continues to focus on Silicon Valley, I hope they heed the words of one of the most prolific innovators and inventors of the past 50 years: proceed with caution, and do not risk lives in an attempt to be more like “them” on the West Coast.