Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced plans to establish a Defense Innovation Advisory Board yesterday. The new board is an effort to enhance DoD’s culture, organization and processes by tapping innovators from the private sector, in Silicon Valley and beyond. It represents Secretary Carter’s enduring commitment to building lasting partnerships between the public and private sectors, according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.
Just as the Defense Business Board provides advice to the department on best business practices from the private sector, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board will provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate.
The board’s mandate is to provide department leaders independent advice on innovative and adaptive means to address future organizational and cultural challenges, including the use of technology alternatives, streamlined project management processes and approaches - all with the goal of identifying quick solutions to DoD problems.
The Defense Innovation Advisory Board will seek to advise the department on areas that are deeply familiar to Silicon Valley companies, such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing.
The board will not engage in discussion of military operations or strategy.
The board will be chaired by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. It will be comprised of up to 12 individuals who have successfully led large private and public organizations, and excelled at identifying and adopting new technology concepts. Members will be selected jointly by Secretary Carter and Dr. Schmidt. Members will represent a cross-section of America’s most innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from Silicon Valley and beyond.
As chairman of Alphabet, and as the author of “How Google Works,” Schmidt has a unique perspective on the latest practices in harnessing and encouraging innovation, and the importance of technology in driving organizational behavior and business operations.
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