Chris Aliperti, Eden Elizabeth Lawson and Chris Flournoy
AI-enabled spectrum reconnaissance, 3D printed drones, and autonomous combat vehicles. These are no longer the dream ventures of Silicon Valley startups; these are products being created by soldiers at Army bases across the country thanks to the explosion of tactical innovation throughout the service. What started as a few soldiers with simple prototypes in ad hoc makerspaces has transformed into formal innovation cells operating out of research and development labs embedded within operational units. A handful of creative inventions has grown to multimillion-dollar portfolios of products scaling across the Army. As the grassroots efforts grow, kudos and accolades from senior leaders have shifted to calls for accountability and apprehension about these disruptive teams’ breaks from bureaucracy. With every success of tactical innovation, the demand signal for increased resourcing grows louder, but matching its crescendo is the question from the bill payers: What is the ROI—the specific return on this investment?
Impactful tactical innovation requires investing money, people, and space—and most importantly underwriting of risk—into an inherently entrepreneurial venture that is uncommon in the Department of Defense. The return on these investments has been disproportionately high, but difficult to quantify. Understandably, this gives leaders at every echelon hesitation about further investing in these efforts. Much of this concern comes from a discrepancy in expectations. We have had the opportunity to explain tactical innovation, and the expected return on an investment in it, to countless leaders by framing it in terms of three outcomes.
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