The blueprint for a better military:How architectural innovations deliver strategic competitive advantages

The blueprint for a better military | How architectural innovations deliver strategic competitive advantages

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About the AuthorsJoe Mariani is a Research Manager with Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research where he leads Deloitte’s research campaign on the Internet of Things. Joe’s research focuses on helping organizations navigate issues surrounding innovation, technology adoption, and human-machine interfaces. With previous experience as a consultant, high school science teacher, and Marine Corps intelligence officer, Joe is able to break down complex trends around emerging technologies and communicate clear insights to a wide audience.

Ted Johnson is the Defense and National Security Research Manager with Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights. He is a retired Commander in the United States Navy where he primarily focused on cyber policy and signals intelligence. During the course of his military career, he was a Speechwriter for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a White House Fellow, a military professor at the Naval War College, and an aide-de-camp to the Director of the National Security Agency.

About the Deloitte Center for Government InsightsThe Deloitte Center for Government Insights shares inspiring stories of government innovation, looking at what’s behind the adoption of new technologies and management practices. We produce cutting-edge research that guides public officials without burying them in jargon and minutiae, crystalizing essential insights in an easy-to-absorb format. Through research, forums, and immersive workshops, our goal is to provide public officials, policy professionals, and members of the media with fresh insights that advance an understanding of what is possible in government transformation.

The blueprint for a better military | How architectural innovations deliver strategic competitive advantages

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As young staff officer J.F.C. Fuller sat in his office in 1918, the great powers had already been wearied by four years of muddy, bloody trench warfare. A technology had recently arrived that promised not only to end the stalemate of the trenches, but the war itself - a technology so new, that it had no name. Originally called “landships”, designers would eventually settle on “tank” because of its resemblance to steel water tanks of the day. But despite their promise, the initial engagements fought by these tanks were inconclusive at best. While they could easily cross the muddy trenches, the infantry and horse cavalry could not exploit the breakthrough, and the tanks often had to pull back to their original positions.1

Fuller had an epiphany. The issue was not the technology; the tanks were fine. The problem was that they were not being used in coordination with other units properly. He devised his Plan 1919 to combine tanks, aircraft, and motorized infantry to break through enemy lines and throw the enemy into disarray.2 While German surrender in 1918 shelved Fuller’s plan, ironically it was the German army again that resurrected the ideas as Blitzkrieg to race across Europe in 1940. So what made the technology of the tank so successful in 1940 where it had not been in 1918?

What Fuller had stumbled upon was a truth of both business and military strategy. In many ways, technologies are not the critical elements of strategic success, but rather it is the connections between technologies that are crucial. These connections, or architectures, determine how technologies work with other elements, how they are structured, how organizations are transformed, and how personnel are trained. So when the tank was used in isolation in older doctrines, it was only marginally successful. However, when new doctrine established new connections between the tank and other technologies, such as airpower and motorized infantry, it became revolutionary.

The key insight is that the true innovation was architectural, not technological. Though the introduction of new capabilities is essential, it is also not sufficient alone. As such, architectural innovation, or the reconfiguration that results from new linkages and interactions between components, is a key to success.3 The resulting strategic advantage is more than just the sum of its parts; it creates conditions for a factorial leap in capability that has the potential to offset the strengths of competing nations.

However, identifying and supporting new architectural innovations is difficult. The innovations that are likely to provide asymmetric advantages for the next couple decades will almost certainly bring with them massive changes to how military forces operate, organize, train, and even manage personnel. But this is not to say that innovation of this type is impossible or merely down to luck. Drawing from academic research, experience with commercial firms, and real world examples from military history, this article will to bring to life a path from drawing board to battlefield. For while militaries may increasingly need to turn to outside sources for new technologies, the real innovations that will shape, and even deter, the conflicts of the 21st century will likely come from the clever minds of defense leaders.

What technology can (and cannot) do to create an enduring asymmetric advantage

When the tank was used in isolation in older doctrines, it was only marginally successful. However, when new doctrine established new connections between the tank and other technologies ... it became revolutionary. These connections, or architectures, are the true source of innovation.

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Facing a myriad of issues across the globe that challenge existing military capabilities, the US Department of Defense has launched the search for the so-called Third Offset, searching for “innovative ways to sustain and advance America’s military dominance for the 21st century.”4

The core question underlying the Third Offset then is, ‘what gives a fighting force a strategic advantage?’ Tactical advantages have been known and studied for millennia. Weather, terrain, size of force, weaponry and similar factors can all influence the outcome of a particular battle. At an operational level, military thinkers have made intensive studies of centers of gravity and critical capabilities that provide advantage in one campaign over another. But how does a military create an advantage over potential adversaries long before the first shots of a conflict?

In the military, enduring asymmetric advantage tends to be closely associated with new technologies. Eras are even denoted in terms of its technology, for example 4th generation versus 5th generation fighter jets. So it is perhaps no surprise, then, that in most contexts, the Third Offset often becomes synonymous with finding new, emerging technologies that can sustain America’s technological dominance.5 However, this may be misguided for a number of reasons.

First, it is very difficult to identify and create truly novel and unique technologies. From the Excalibur smart artillery round to the F-35, existing requirements and acquisition processes have produced some of the most advanced military technology ever seen. However, the traditional acquisition process begins with existing war plans, plans that were made by commanders to maximize the current strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the forces at their disposal. As a result, such plans will typically call for incremental innovations or improvements to existing technologies – a faster tank, a bomber that can fly farther. Therefore, while this process is incredibly well-suited to produce the 5th generation of fighter jet, it will likely struggle to create an entirely new technology whose military use has yet to be conceived.

Looking outside the halls of the Pentagon and traditional defense contractors may be helpful, but is also not the sole solution. More than one quarter of all technology venture capital funding in the world is located in San Francisco and San Jose metro area.6 From this perspective, the Department of Defense’s outreach to Silicon Valley makes perfect sense, for nowhere else is there the same density of new technologies.7 However, if a military finds a useful technology in the private sector, that technology is by definition open to all. A publically available technology alone, no matter how advanced, cannot help warfighters gain the upper hand on an adversary.8

The problem is not with Silicon Valley. In fact, the mere pace at which industry is producing new technologies suggest that at least some of the components of the next big thing will come from the commercial sector.9 The problem is that technology alone cannot be a source of military competitive advantage because it can be easily copied. Merely classifying a technology or driving its development internally does not solve the underlying problem either. Even complex or classified designs can quickly be stolen or copied by a potential adversary. For example, the TU-4, the first Soviet strategic bomber, was a bolt-for-bolt copy of the B-29.10 While the TU-4 project relied on captured aircraft, the digital age has made this process even easier. The flow of technology around the world has never been faster.11 Potential adversaries are likely to be aware of any new technology, and quickly take steps either to imitate that technology (as is the case with the TU-4 and 5th generation fighters in development) or mitigate its effects (as is the case with technologies such as GPS jamming).12 The basic tenet of an offset strategy is that technologies alone cannot provide an enduring asymmetric advantage – you can’t buy victory. 13

Looking for a Few Good Technologies

Facing a myriad of issues across the globe that challenge existing military capabilities, the US Department of Defense has launched the search for the Third Offset, a strategic plan to regain and expand the military’s competitive advantage over near-peer nations.

The basic tenet of an offset strategy is that technologies alone cannot provide an enduring asymmetric advantage – you can’t buy victory. Instead, enduring advantages are architectural, not technological.

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Even the most advanced technologies do not exist in isolation. From the spear to stealth fighter jets, no single technology has ever won a battle on its own. Rather, the utility of technology depends on its relationships to other technologies, systems and activities. In short, what militaries are seeking is not a new technology, but a strategic advantage, and such advantages are based on architectures. Success depends as much on doctrine, training, and organization as it does on technology. That is exactly the insight of J.F.C Fuller with the tank. When used in the existing doctrine that itself led to trench warfare, the tank could not be truly revolutionary. However, when coupled in the right way with other technologies such as air power in a new doctrine, and leveraged by the right organizational constructs, it changed the face of warfare.

The same applies in the modern search for advantage. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work sums it up succinctly when he says, “if you ever hear anybody say that the Third Offset is about technology, just tell them they’ve got to be crazy.”14 While it is clear that technology alone is not sufficient to ensure an enduring asymmetric advantage over an adversary, it is not immediately obvious what else is required.

This is where one breakthrough insight from the business world can help. In trying to understand why some companies thrived and others foundered from technological advances Rebecca Henderson, a professor at MIT, and Kim Clark, a professor at Harvard, hit on the idea that what was important was not just the technology, but the connections between the technologies termed architectural innovations.15 What their research showed was that advantage was the sum of both the technology at work and the connections between those technologies. Change in technology alone was likely to yield merely incremental results; however, a change to the architecture was often required for any truly revolutionary change (see figure 1). For example, a leading company in an industry could enjoy a benefit from a technology that simply improved an existing component (the change from black and white to color film for example), but when the fundamental ways all of the technologies worked together changed, those leading companies were often thrown for a loop (the change from physical film to digital cameras).

Figure 1. To create strategic advantage both technology and the connections between those technologies are needed.

Connections between Technologies

TechnologyDesired Strategic Advantage

While the business world struggles to describe these nebulous connections between technologies, the military actually has a

readymade vocabulary to describe them. The distinction between materiel and non-materiel capabilities neatly captures the themes of Henderson and Clark’s research. Materiel capabilities, including technology and troop strength, govern how individual units accomplish assigned tasks. More troops and an infantry battalion can do more, a better fighter jet and a fighter wing can accomplish more with each sortie. But military planners have long realized that the real strength of any force lies in how well different units can work together, which is not determined by troops or technology, but by doctrine, training, and organization.16 Therefore, to create a strategic advantage, a military cannot merely add new technologies, but they should also provide new doctrine, training, and organization to better leverage that new technology.

Figure 2. The strategic advantage equation in military terms

• Training • Organization• Command &

Control

• Technology• SOPs• Troop Strength

Desired Strategic Advantage

How Individual Units Shoot, Move, & Communicate

How multiple units work together effectively

Corporate advantage over adversaries

The importance of architectural innovation is not new to the military and is readily apparent in the examination of the First and Second Offset strategies. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower sought to counter the Warsaw Pact by using the strategic deployment of nuclear weapons to counter the Soviet Union’s conventional strength. Nuclear technology was elemental to the offset, but the advantage was realized in the networked deployment of nuclear assets, evolution of the defense structure established by the National Security Act of 1947, empowerment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and national economic vitality bolstered by a 40% reduction in the defense budget. Utilization of strategic capabilities and organizational reform provided a competitive advantage by countering a conventional arms race.

Two decades later, the Second Offset strategy countered the Soviet Union’s quantitative force advantage by adopting technologies such as precision guided munitions, night vision devices, and stealth technology. Night vision allowed US forces to “own the night” and have a significant advantage over adversaries limited to daytime operations. However, it was not night vision technology alone that gave this advantage. As Deputy Secretary Work points out, “anybody could have bought night vision goggles in 1978. It was the training, techniques and procedures… that allowed [the Army] to own the night.”17 Where night vision technology already existed, it was changing how it connected to other technologies – those training, techniques, and procedures – that made night vision a source of advantage.

Can’t Buy Victory

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Experience from both business and the military show that the focus on architectures in the first two offsets was not accidental, but that enduring asymmetric advantage can come only from changes to the connections between technologies. Even without introducing a new technology, new connections can create a new advantage. Think about ride sharing apps. At their launch around 2011, all of the necessary technologies were already in common use.18 GPS-enabled smart phones were already used by nearly half of all American households, and the individually-owned vehicle had been an icon of American culture for decades.19 Ride sharing apps did not introduce any singular new technology, but rather combined those existing technologies in new ways to create an entirely new capability – that ability to match willing drivers with passengers in need of a ride.

These “connections only” innovations are alive and well in today’s military. For example, the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) is tasked with using existing military technology in new ways to create clever “trick plays” to solve some of today’s hardest tactical problems. The director of the SCO, Will Roper, describes his challenge in exactly the terms of redefining the connections between technologies, “I can’t solve the problem with system A or system B but by connecting them together I can.”20 For example, one of the successes of SCO has been to combine commercially available micro drones with the existing flare canister on an F-16 to enable the aircraft to launch a swarm of mini drones from purely existing technologies.21 This provides traditional fighter aircraft with greater situational awareness and defensive capabilities.

Experience from both business and the military show that the focus on architectures in previous offset strategies was not accidental, but that enduring asymmetric advantage can come only from changes to the connections between technologies.

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While trick plays are useful, they cannot create an enduring asymmetric advantage. After all, like trick plays in sports, once they are used the adversary is now aware and can defend against them. But this does not mean that the approach of changing the connections between technologies is flawed. Far from it. It simply means that not all connections are created equal.22 The changes created by groups like the SCO are “trick plays” because they change connections between relatively low level component technologies. Adding drones to a flare canister does not radically change how either the drone or the F-16 work. And like trick plays in sports, it may be easier to design a flea-flicker than an entirely new offensive scheme, but only one can give enduring asymmetric advantage. In other words, what militaries need to create strategic advantage are changes to the connections between technologies at a high level: changes to the core doctrine, training and organization that can yield not new trick plays, but an entirely new playbook.

The challenge is that creating these new, high-level architectures is incredibly difficult. Everything within the organization may push back against the change. That is because everything in the organization from the equipment, to the training manuals, to the promotion structure was created to best serve the old doctrine, the old architecture.23 Even personnel who believe in the new architecture may be hesitant to adopt it fully because it may harm their career or the old processes are just easier. So to get innovations off of paper and onto the battlefield requires more than platitudes about start-up culture and failing fast. It takes top to bottom organizational change.

For an example, let’s return to the example of the aircraft carrier. Even after the first mating of ship and aircraft in 1912, development of the aircraft carrier was slow. Even after an aircraft carrier launched raid at the close of 1918 demonstrated the potential for the new combination as a viable weapons system with new capabilities for mobile strike, development was still slow.24 As an example of how little was thought of aircraft carriers as a weapons system at the time, the Washington Naval Treaty, a treaty designed to end the possibility of a future sea war, severely curtailed battleship and cruiser construction but left aircraft carrier production virtually untouched.25 This was because navies of the time were fundamentally built around the battleship. All technologies were connected in such a way as to allow for battleship-battleship

engagements via big guns. To think of the aircraft carrier as strike platform of its own ran so counter to the prevailing doctrine of the day that it was difficult to even comprehend as a concept.26 The very organization of the Navy was built around the battleship. Officers and sailors were trained from the outset in its central role in naval warfare. Every aspect of the navy from metrics for promotion to the signs on the walls would have resisted any change to such a central connection as the primacy of the battleship.

But progress did continue on aircraft carriers, albeit at a slow pace. Pilots were trained; new organizations such as carrier air wings formed; and most importantly, the doctrine for carrier battle groups - with the carrier, not the battleship, as the centerpiece weapon system - was pieced together. This is the good news. If an organization can do the hard work of changing high-level architectures, it can produce enduring asymmetric advantage. And unlike technologies which are easy to copy, architectural knowledge is incredibly difficult to reproduce. Herein lies the true offset that facilitates an enduring asymmetric advantage.

Consider Southwest Airlines. It is known for being a successful low cost carrier due to a number of innovations including no-assigned seats to speed boarding, a single type of aircraft to reduce maintenance, and fuel hedges to control expenses.27 These can be thought of as the technical innovations of the airline business. And like any technical innovation, it was not long before other airlines tried to copy Southwest with their own low-fare offerings. Continental, United, Delta, and US Air all embarked on low-fare airlines within an airline in the early-1990s. However, by 2003 all had failed and been replaced or rolled back into the parent airline.28 The reason was because while they could see the technologies on the surface that made Southwest successful, they could not see the invisible connections between all of those things, the architecture that made it all work. For example, they could not see that the employee first culture of Southwest helped to boost productivity, keeping the airline profitable even as labor costs increased across the industry.29

How to find and nurture the right innovations?

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If architectural innovations are the source of strategic advantage, then in that sense, they are the Third Offset. This simply redoubles the original question from Deputy Secretary Work, how do you find these “innovative ways to sustain and advance America’s military dominance”? By understanding that the source of that advantage is in architecture and not technology, it is not simply a question of placing bets and hoping a technology pays off. Rather, we now have a host of examples and insights from which to draw structure and proven next steps that can help to identify the way wars will be fought for the remainder of the century. 30

Concrete Steps to Make the Visions Reality

Look Outside for Technologies, Look Inside for Architectures

While the technologies may come from outside the military, those changes to doctrine, training, and organization can only come from within its ranks. Specifically look to junior officers who, new to their careers, are the leaders least steeped in the way things have always been done. As a result, they are often more open to new technologies, tactics, and methods.31

Create New Organizational Forms

Tapping the creativity of junior officers can help to generate new architectures, but if exposed to the existing processes of the organization, those ideas can often be marginalized. New ideas often do not perform well on metrics based on older doctrines. As a result, proponents of those ideas can find themselves with poor performance reviews or even forced out of the organization. 32 Therefore, the search for architectural innovation requires senior leaders to remove barriers to new behaviors, so that those new barriers can become the offset. Specifically, changes to governance and personnel policies may be needed. The hands-off involvement of senior leaders should help to ensure that the think tank can both harness the clever creativity of junior officers while still retaining the freedom to come up with counter-cultural solutions. Any assignment to a group tasked with creating architectural innovations would need to be high profile and selective to attract top officers rotating out of the front line units, not a backwater career killer.

Experiment

A core challenge of military innovation is that it is impossible to know whether an offset has been achieved until you fight and win. The technologies and reforms of the Second Offset were uncertain and their merits debated until the resounding victory in the Gulf War.33 Therefore, just as combat units prepare with tough, realistic training, innovation must become synonymous with tough, realistic experimentation. Innovation groups should be paired with whole combat units, not only to test and evaluate the operation of a technology, but also to develop new ways of using that technology. As new doctrines and techniques prove more and more capable in these experiments, increasing the scope and size of experimental exercises can increasingly define the connections needed to fight and win.

Sell the Change

Finally, while the life or death pressures of combat can often force the acceptance of even radical ideas in wartime, during peacetime more diplomatic strategies may be needed. For example, during the interwar years, progress on aircraft carrier doctrine and tactics was able to progress in large part because of the efforts to disguise it by chief advocate Admiral William Moffett.34 Moffett was able to win support for the development of carrier aviation by describing it, not as a threat to the prevailing battleship centric navy, but as an enhancement to it. The carrier was pitched as a spotting platform, whose aircraft could extend the effective range of the battleship. Compared with obstinate, divisive tactics of his Air Corps counterpart Billy Mitchell, Moffett’s disguising of the true nature of carrier doctrine helped the US Navy enter World War II as one of the most prepared and ready naval aviation forces in the world.35 The interconnected nature of modern warfare means that there are ever more stakeholders that must be convinced of the value of a change. These can range from Congress, to other Services, and even to other agencies within the government. Understanding how these partners determine value and define mission success is critical to being able to pitch them on new architectures.

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Military technological innovations have altered the character of warfare and even reshaped society. But they are often insufficient to maintain the advantage over the militaries of competitor nations. Offset strategies have been the means by which a military’s competitive edge, which inevitably erodes over time, are regained, and their success is due to in large part to process improvement and how new capabilities are integrated. Whether the advent of tanks, aircraft carriers, or fighter jets, technological innovations are best leveraged when viable and strong connections are formed with existing organizational structures and elements.

As such, though we can say that the Third Offset is undoubtedly found in architectural innovations, we cannot say exactly what it is. History and commercial analogs can illustrate the path to creating new architectures, but the military itself must walk that path to discover the source of enduring asymmetric advantage in the 21st century. The famous philosopher Martin Heidegger once opined that equipment were only mere objects until they were used by people.36 Military technology may be no different; technology is only as useful as the doctrine, training, and organization that puts it to use. Meeting the unknown challenges of the 21st century depends more on the creativity of those in uniform to see new connections and opportunities than it does on any killer app or new technology.

Conclusion

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1. Wilkinson, Stephan. J.F.C. “Boney” Fuller – Wacko Genius of Armored Warfare. HistoryNet. July 2009. Available here: http://www.historynet.com/jfc-boney-fuller-wacko-genius-of-armored-warfare.htm

2. Smith, Matthew. J.F.C. Fuller: His Methods, Insights, and Vision. US Army War College. June 1999.

3. Henderson, Rebecca and Clark, Kim. Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms. Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 35 No. 1 (March 1990) pp 9-30.

4. From speech by Deputy Secretary of Defense, Bob Work “The Third US Offset Strategy and its Implications for Partners and Allies” Delivered at the Willard Hotel Washington, DC on January 28, 2015.

5. From an analysis of defense budgets from 2011 to 2015, research firm Govini observed sharp increases in spending on target tracking, directed energy, and hypersonic vehicles, all technologies linked to the 3rd Offset.

6. Florida, Richard. The Global Cities Where Tech Venture Capital is Concentrated. The Atlantic. January 2016. Available here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/global-startup-cities-venture-capital/429255/

7. For more information on this outreach through the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, see: https://www.diux.mil/

8. Porter, Michael. What is Strategy? Harvard Business Review. November-December 1996.

9. While overall firm formation has declined for the past three decades, 2011 saw 69% more high tech firms created than in 1980. For more information see: Hathaway, Ian. Tech Starts: High-Technology Business Formation and Job Creation in the United States. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. August 2013. Available here: http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2013/08/bdstechstartsreport.pdf

10. Hardesty, Von. Made in the USSR: Of course they copied it. The two airplanes could have been twins. But was the Soviets’ Tu-4 truly an exact duplicate of the Boeing B-29? Air and Space Magazine. March 2001.

11. 11 According to a study by Pew, two thirds of the world use the internet, enabling a more rapid sharing of ideas than ever before possible in history. For more information see: http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-in-emerging-economies/pg_16-02-18_technology_internetmap-01/

12. For more information on the potential impact of diffusion of military technologies see: Hammes, T.X. Technologies Converge and Power Diffuses: The Evolution of Small, Smart, and Cheap Weapons. Cato Institute. January 2016. Available here: http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/technologies-converge-power-diffuses-evolution-small-smart-cheap

13. Tucker, Patrick. Pentagon Shakes Up Silicon Valley Outreach. Government Executive. May 2016. Available here: http://www.govexec.com/defense/2016/05/pentagon-shakes-silicon-valley-outreach/128245/

14. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work in a February Interview with Sydney Freedberg of Breaking Defense. Full interview available here: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/02/its-not-about-technology-bob-work-on-the-3rd-offset-strategy/

15. Henderson, Rebecca and Clark, Kim. Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms. Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 35 No. 1 (March 1990) pp 9-30.

16. For more information on the recognized importance of doctrine, training, and organization see Chapter 3 of Warfighting, the US Marine Corps’ foundational doctrinal publication. Available here: http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/MCDP%201%20Warfighting.pdf

17. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work as quoted in Mehta, Aaron. Bob Work: Army Challenges Reminiscent of 1970s. Defense News. October 4, 2016. Available here: http://www.defensenews.com/articles/bob-work-army-challenges-reminiscent-of-1970s

18. Uber was officially launched in 2011 and Lyft in 2012.

19. Smartphone penetration in the United States from 2008 to 2014. Statista. Available here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218529/us-martphone-penetration-since-2008/

20. Pellerin, Cheryl. DoD Strategic Capabilities Office Gives Deployed Military Systems New Tricks. DoD News, April 4, 2016. Available here: http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/712938/dod-strategic-capabilities-office-gives-deployed-military-systems-new-tricks

21. Pellerin, Cheryl. DoD Tech Transformation Holds Surprises for U.S. Adversaries. DoD News, April 12, 2016. Available here: http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/719222/dod-tech-transformation-holds-surprises-for-us-adversaries

22. The concept that some connections are easier to change than others is called “design hierarchies.” For more information see: Clark, Kim. The Interactions of Design Hierarchies and Market Concepts in Technological Evolution. Research Policy. 14 (1985) pp 235-251.

23. Christensen, Clayton. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Harpers Collins, New York. 2003.

24. Layman, R. L. Furious and the Tondern Raid. Warship International. Vol. X no. 4. pp. 374–385.

25. The treaty did regulate the overall tonnage of aircraft carriers, however while all signatories were at or over the tonnage limits on capital ships, all were well under the tonnage limit on carriers. This led to many battleships and cruiser hulls being converted to ersatz aircraft carriers during the interwar years.

26. Kuehn, John T. Military Innovations: Naval innovations in the interwar period. Lecture delivered to Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics on March 5, 2015. Video of lecture is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz7DcC3Brp8

27. Elliot, Christopher. A Southwest solution? Elliot.org October 8, 2002.

28. Kumar, Nirmalya. Strategies to Fight Low-Cost Rivals. Harvard Business Review. December 2006.

29. Schnurman, Mitchell. High pay, job security and profit-sharing — and Southwest pilots are picketing? The Dallas Morning News. February 5, 2016.

30. Pierce, Terry. Warfighting and Disruptive Innovation: Disguising Innovation. Frank Cass Press. New York. 2004.

31. Following the successful, but officially inconclusive demonstration of carrier attack power in the 1929 exercise Fleet Problem IX, junior officers played a key role in further developing the tactics tested in Problem IX. See: Edwards, Will. From Fleet Exercise to Fast Carrier Task Force: The Development of Multicarrier Formations. International Journal of Naval History. April 2016: Vol 13 Iss 1.

32. Even iconic figures like A. T. Mahan found themselves on the receiving end of poor performance reviews when advocating for large changes. Mahan was even once told by a senior officer that “naval officers don’t write books.”

Endnotes

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Not only did Mahan go on to coin the term “Middle East” but is also widely regarded as one of the foremost naval strategists in history. Kuehn, John T. Military Innovations: Naval innovations in the interwar period. Lecture delivered to Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics on March 5, 2015. Video of lecture is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz7DcC3Brp8

33. Rochlin and Demchak. The Gulf War: Technological and Organizational Implications. Survival: Global Politics and Strategy. Volume 33, Issue 3. 1991.

34. Pierce, Terry. Warfighting and Disruptive Innovation: Disguising Innovation. Frank Cass Press. New York. 2004.

35. Singer, Peter. Lessons on Defense Strategy from the Interwar Years. Brookings. August 2013. Available here: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lessons-on-defense-strategy-from-the-interwar-years/

36. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Harper & Row. New York. 1962.

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