Evan Hanson and James Eimers

In a speech at the 2018 Air Warfare Symposium, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright described the long line of airmen who had ideas, but a “longer line of folks waiting to tell them no.” But the National Defense Strategy prioritizes innovation, and senior Air Force leaders champion it to improve the U.S. military’s competitive advantage. As potential near-peer adversaries steal intellectual property and increase investment in their own capabilities, the Air Force can leverage the creative capacity of American airmen to increase capability per dollar. Given that innovation is featured so prominently in the speeches of senior leaders and incorporated in the capstone American military strategy document, how effective is the Air Force in translating good ideas into solutions?

In recent years, the U.S. Air Force established over 50 innovation hubs around the world, distributed $64 million in Squadron Innovation Funds, and created an annual Air Force Spark Tank competition to recognize airmen with “the most game changing ideas.” After substantial investment, is the United States Air Force delivering innovation?

Drawing on the experiences of innovative airmen whose ideas were selected at the service’s predominant innovation competition by the major commands and won millions of dollars, this article explores the challenges and offers lessons learned every Air Force organization must incorporate to achieve the innovation called for in the National Defense Strategy.

Lessons from Air Force Spark Tank Recipients

Since launching Spark Tank in 2018, the Air Force has hosted three competitions, recognizing 13 finalist ideas. We contacted all the finalist recipients for the 2018 and 2019 competitions, following up on the status of their solutions. Unfortunately, we discovered that—despite tremendous passion on the part of the innovator and the initial support—more than 75% of finalists’ proposals have been either cancelled or reduced in scope in terms of schedule, cost, or performance.

One innovator described how balancing the requirements of a full-time position while also developing an Air Force innovation project became untenable. Another did not receive the funding on a timeline that made sense for the project. After the Spark Tank competition, the onus is on the winner to follow up to ensure a return on the investment or support as there is no Air Force entity, AFWERX or otherwise, to provide assistance. The recipient also does not receive support such as project management, acquisitions, or sustainment expertise necessary to ensure the proposal’s long-term success.

For someone who committed significant on-duty and off-duty hours striving to make the Air Force more effective, an unimplemented solution can feel like failure. In our discussions with these airmen, we found some to be frustrated by the system. Others expressed shame—even guilt. After millions of dollars of investment and countless hours, the Air Force loses as these ideas and so many others burn out before they can be implemented.

Barriers and Solutions

If our “competitive military advantage has been eroding,” as the 2018 National Defense Strategy states, why are the Air Force’s most prized proposals fading away? Every organization must continuously ensure the following to innovate on the scale required: ensuring leadership follows up and engagement, assigning organizational ownership, and improving implementation.

(Senior) Leader Follow Up and Continued Engagement

*Audience Engagement Curve (Heidi Schultz)*

If there is one essential ingredient to implementing an innovative idea, it is leadership support and engagement. Dr. Heidi Schultz illustrates this on the audience engagement curve. Over time, interest in an innovative proposal wanes. Because the individuals with the ideas are closer to the execution of tasks, they rarely have the organizational leverage to unilaterally implement the solutions. Leaders, however, have an outsized influence on ensuring engagement throughout the dip shown above. Industry analysts, academics, and the experiences of the Spark Tank finalists confirm this to be true: strong leadership is crucial to success.

Air Force senior leaders, particularly colonels and above, affect the outcome of innovation efforts in two key ways. First, by regularly making time to learn about and check-in on innovative solutions from within their organizations, senior leaders positively message their entire team. Attention to an issue signifies, “This is important to me and should be to you, too.” Secondly, this indirect advocacy motivates an innovator who may be struggling with waning support and helps overcome organizational resistance to change.

This engagement also provides senior leaders opportunities to communicate where and when risk-taking is acceptable within their organizations. When the Air Force began the campaign to reduce excessive regulation, the Secretary of the Air Force cited 1300 official instructions—a number so large that even simple solutions often require deviation from written standards. When considering the Air Force’s institutional emphasis on compliance, this creates tension as many airmen fear adverse effects on their career if they “play in the gray.” An engaged and encouraging leader can change this. By following an innovation effort, leaders familiarize themselves with the risks as well as benefits. They can even encourage and support innovators where appropriate by assuming risk on their behalf. Communicating that failure is acceptable is not credible on the stage at an awards ceremony; it only works when spoken by a leader in the trench with an innovator before the outcome of the innovation effort is certain.

Lastly, when senior leaders stay engaged to support an innovator, they also illuminate the frozen middle. Often innovative proposals stall because they are hidden amongst the lowest priorities of external or higher-headquarters organizations, which have the power to veto implementation. In a system that prizes compliance, rote application, and reliability, senior leaders—and commanders specifically—must communicate the potential benefit of innovative solutions on behalf of their organizations. Senior leaders must do what they are uniquely positioned to do: follow up on projects and advocate for their implementation.

Assign Organizational Ownership to Overcome Loss Aversion

In addition to leadership engagement at all levels, Air Force organizations must prioritize improvement and innovation. Consider the following thought experiment. If we surveyed every Air Force organization, we likely would find most organizations review areas of non-compliance on a monthly or quarterly basis. For many squadrons, this process includes reviewing the Management Information Control Toolset checklists based on their respective functional areas. Of these organizations, we estimate very few review innovation projects in their normal battle rhythm. This is an example of what Nobel-Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman describes as loss aversion in Thinking, Fast and Slow. The term “refers to the relative strength of two motives: we are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains,” and this tendency plays out daily in staff meetings around the Air Force.[1] In other words, airmen are more likely to devote time, energy, thought, and resources to updating an appointment letter than they are to visiting a company downtown that might offer a new approach to everyday tasks. The Air Force sees innovation as extra. This is not to say that the Air Force should only focus on future ideas, but all airmen need to be aware of the natural lean to prioritize today’s problems over tomorrow’s potential solutions. In an era of self-inspection and embracing the red, airmen are still psychologically wired to fix problems rather than devoting the same amount of attention and resources to opportunities that might ensure U.S. Air Force dominance during the next war.

So how does the Air Force get past loss aversion? The service must evaluate proposals and assign promising solutions to organizations that can develop long-term implementation strategies. This can also ensure potential solutions are captured and considered in the context of other weapons systems and force improvement efforts. Too often, a permanent change of station move means the end of an innovation effort, invisible to the unit and the Air Force. By assigning ownership to an organization, the Air Force can ensure ideas are captured, evaluated, and resourced based on their potential impact to the mission and not on the solitary effort of the airman-innovator.

Implementation to “De-Buzzword” Innovation

Lastly, the Air Force must ensure that empowering airmen to improve how they accomplish their mission remains the focus of the drive for innovation. With the many resources allocated to wing innovation hubs and Spark Tank competitions, the Air Force has placed tremendous attention on recognizing an idea. But while some airmen get excited, others label innovation a buzzword and decry the movement as a rebranding of previous Air Force efficiency efforts. There are points embedded in this critique that all airmen would do well to hear.

While it is vital to recognize airmen who propose how the Air Force might increase lethality or improve readiness, senior leaders must also recognize successful implementation of innovation efforts with similar fanfare. This is not about recognizing the airman innovator per se, although every Spark Tank finalist we spoke with described facing even more work after the competition. Rather, it is about refocusing airmen on the fact that innovation is about mission impact.

*Defense Spending Comparison Between the U.S. and China (IIIS)*

Our discussions with the Spark Tank finalists gave credibility to critiques heard in breakrooms and backshops. If the majority of the Spark Tank finalist projects fail to receive the support necessary to implement and sustain the proposed solutions, how will the Air Force inculcate innovation in hundreds of squadrons around the world? And if this is so crucial to the strategy outlined in the National Defense Strategy, how will the Air Force meet the challenge of adversaries quickly closing the gap? This is particularly relevant in the case of China, a country whose investments in defense over the past ten years show a nation consistently marching toward parity with the United States. In a world where defense spending is nearly equal, innovation becomes a key differentiator. How well the Air Force innovates may be the difference in a future confrontation.

The lack of follow-through and implementation of these projects creates a credibility problem, even for airmen committed to the cause. When innovative solutions are lauded at all-calls, but the change is not captured in an Air Force instruction re-write or implemented in organizations with similar mission-sets—is it more than just an outstanding bullet on a performance report? The answers to these questions depend on what must be the North Star for Air Force innovation: implementation.

Innovation that Works: Implementation as the Litmus Test

To remain dominant, the U.S. Air Force must ensure innovation works—that the best ideas airmen have to offer are developed and put into practice. This is about showing airmen the Air Force is serious about turning quality proposals into reality that can effect meaningful change in the service. What might it look like for the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to recognize an innovator like Major Ali Liquat for implementing the Air Force Connect app at the next Air Force Spark Tank competition? Or to announce a formal partnership program assigning an innovator to a program office that can resource and sustain the effort over the long-term? With implementation as the focus, the Air Force’s approach sends a message that is critical to sustaining this effort: innovation enables and enhances the missions airmen do every day.

Moving forward, the Air Force must consider implementation as the litmus test for how well the service is doing to support innovation. To be true to its vision statement and remain “The World’s Greatest Air Force—Powered by Airmen, Fueled by Innovation,” the Air Force must prioritize leadership follow-up and engagement and organizational ownership of innovative solutions to show airmen that their ideas can be implemented. Not every idea should be enacted, but of the projects vetted and nominated by major commands and selected by Headquarters Air Force, the majority should be. This focus on implementation with the solutions recommended above will achieve and accelerate change to ensure the Air Force remains the dominant force America needs it to be in the years to come.

Evan Hanson is an Air Force Logistics Readiness and Missile Maintenance officer with a background in supply, deployment and distribution, and air transportation; he previously founded LaunchWERX at F.E. Warren AFB—the 90th Missile Wing’s first innovation hub. James Eimers is an Air Force Nuclear Munitions officer who championed his Brass to Bucks project during the inaugural 2018 Air Force Spark Tank. He holds a M.S. in Supply Chain Management from the Air Force Institute of Technology. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Spark Tank (USAF Graphic)

Notes:

[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 302.