The potential benefits of private partnerships are a hot topic in DoD, even though the benefits have so far only been realized on a smaller scale.
“I think that there’s clearly leadership alignment around recognizing that we need to do a better job of partnering,” said Shelby Mounts, a Navy captain and service representative for the Defense Business Board.
“We simply can’t expect that we have either the corner of the market on developing new capabilities. The pace of change external to DoD’s ability to develop both capabilities and competencies is rapidly changing on the outside. So how can we be intelligent and use the resources that we have in the most efficient way in order to get the most bang for the buck in leap-ahead technologies?”
Mounts spoke about defense innovation and private partnership as the keynote speaker of the Small Business Development Consortium’s Oct. 8 meeting.
The consortium, a cadre of 85 businesses and contractors, provides opportunities for small businesses to provide solutions for government, from federal to local levels.
Mounts said that technology development was moving so fast, that DoD is better served by exchanging ideas with the private sector through partnerships and executive fellowships.
“Through partnerships, [we could] learn about practice and process and thinking in a way that makes us better at all the other things that we do: talent management, acquisition to logistics,” he said.
The partnerships would, in effect, involve DoD swapping leaders with private sector organizations in fellowships that would provide both parties with knowledge of operations, thereby integrating innovative thinking into the department.
Those exchanges are already happening in small pockets, but Mounts said the department would be aided if those pockets were scaled up.
Mounts cited a July Defense Business Board report that he helped work on, outlining innovation partnerships that have worked and road mapping a way for the Secretary of Defense to develop those programs on a larger scale.
“That lays out a way for the SecDef to build an upper management network that gets significant exposure and partnership on the outside,” he said, “both by bringing external fellows in and by sending more senior officers out so they get a year embedded in a company, really learning the way that company operates and thinks and then bringing that DNA back in.”
Among the programs that the report said that could demonstrate the benefit of DoD partnerships were the Navy’s Leading Innovation program, the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows Program and Information Technology Exchange Program.
Mounts said that other programs like DIUX, a pilot program that teams DoD officials with Silicon Valley start-ups for tech development, also does a good job of infusing the department with more innovative thinking.
Ken York, a SBDC member and COO of Orchestrate Technology, said that partnerships could provide small business an opportunity to bring new methods to DoD, but that requires the department to embrace them on a larger scale so the businesses can make their abilities known.
“We still don’t see the bridge between us,” York said of the business world and defense department. “We are trying to build a bridge, but it’s not there yet.
“We want to get going in this direction. We want to take advantage of everything that you guys are doing and bring it into our side and vice versa.”
Mounts said networks like the SBDC are one way to help bring innovators to the attention of the DoD, who will continue to be looking for new ways to maximize efficiency in the Digital Age.
“I think there is some potential there to continue to build,” he said. “I think there is no one silver bullet. I think the members of this organization need to be active in the larger industry organizations.
“Recognize that all industries have organizations for a reason. Because when you get to that reputational level as well as a mass level, it does provide some legitimacy for the leaders and their supporting ecosystems to carve time out and engage.”
