A Revitalized USAF Culture of Innovation
Abstract
From its inception, the United States Air Force (USAF) has always been on the leading edge of technological innovation in the military and has consistently challenged the status quo in order to maintain global dominance throughout the 20th century. However, since the end of the Cold War, new realities have challenged our ability to maintain the innovative edge. The combined stresses of global operations and tight budgets have constrained the resources and manpower available to advance enterprise-wide process reinvention, workplace improvement, and a culture of innovation. In the post-Cold War era, institutional barriers to innovation in the Air Force have emerged, such as lack of a central focal point for idea development, mixed marketing for and communication between existing programs, and inconsistent incentives to standardize and disseminate innovative processes throughout the USAF. The Air Force has valuable programs in place to encourage critical thinking among our Airmen on confronting organizational challenges such as the Every Dollar Counts campaign, Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century (AFSO21), and the Air Force Global Strike Command s Strike Now program. However, these programs are independent and do not share submitted ideas. First, we propose a new Innovation Office (IO) to integrate these resources to capture ideas in one location and tap larger economies of scale. The new office would be an installation-level entity tasked with organizing and vetting process improvements, overseeing think tanks and sabbaticals, and sending recommendations directly to the senior leaders. Finally, the IO would be headed by a Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) who is outside the chain of command and accountable for pushing a culture of innovation throughout the USAF, starting at the installation-level.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA603907
Entities
People
- Ashley Vincent
- Gabriel Gassie
- Jared Kleiman
- Keith Manry
- Solin Hartwell
- Tyler Weeks
- Vito Bussmann
Organizations
- Air University