Challenges to Innovation at the Naval Surface Warfare Centers

Abstract

The Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Centers are slated for providing innovative, cost-effective solutions for the Warfighter, but how innovative are the Centers compared to industry and commercial, and how can the Centers be improved? This study explores the topic with a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis focused on a scoped definition of innovation and successful innovation practices with source material solely from publicly available sources, and ties together a comparative picture of government versus successful commercial entities. The innovation definitions and theories reveal areas of concentration like funding and leadership buy-in, which are poled from various sources including National Defense Appropriations Acts, acquisition training materials, and years of Government Accountability Office studies to compare the Centers, other government innovation focused entities, and successful commercial entities against, thus providing multiple layers of comparison. The study groups and categorizes observations into a scoring table revealing the Warfare Centers are deeply constrained, and provides a basis of measure for the current state and future measures that could be used to understand the innovation potential of the Centers or other entities. Additional recommendations are provided to enable realignment of the Warfare Centers and other government research entities to successful innovative organizations.