Innovation -- and strategy -- for complex, adaptive systems with Dr. Andrew Hill

[Music] my research focuses on innovation and specifically looking at innovation in complex adaptive systems and the reason why I'm especially interested in innovation and complex adaptive systems is because I think we often have this view of innovation as some kind of a genius a Steve Jobs type person who sort of sits down and looks at the competitive environment and then comes up with some brilliant idea that he or she then implements and changes the world and that does happen but often also what happens is that you you have an environment Act specifically a competitive environment that's rapidly changing it's adapting all the time and it's extremely complex so it's hard to understand and so innovation in that context is often more a matter of learning from what we're doing and making appropriate quick adjustments based on our experiences with that I think if it's sort of Steve Jobs stands at one end of the recent spectrum of innovation in this area I would put Jeff Bezos on the other side in terms of his ability to generate adaptive innovations based on how he understands the unfolding competitive environment if you look at Amazon's history it's a company that has dramatically changed over the course of its history and and it's always been maybe that's sort of one consistent thread is it's always been very responsive to its customers but that responsiveness to its customers has pulled it into all kinds of other areas and it has innovated extensively in the process so so I'm I'm fascinated by this topic I think it's extremely important to any large organization or even small organization in a competitive environment but especially important to the US military I don't like how technology centric discussion of innovation often is we we often make it all about the stuff you know all the iPhone and you know the Xbox and the Mac and who knows what else right it's not really about this stuff it's about the context of use you can take an amazing object and use it in a totally stupid banal way or you can take an ordinary object and repurpose it and it's incredibly innovative I I think you know we when we think about artificial intelligence and automation we need to start thinking about not just how we fit that into our existing ways of thinking about how we fight how we prepare forces but a completely new approach to warfare that is enabled by this technology something that I don't think anybody really understands like I don't think there's anybody out there who gets it but in order to develop that idea we have to be willing to take some risk we gotta experiment we have to pursue maybe more of the Amazon approach where you have some core idea that drives you to be very open about exploring new applications new ways for you to succeed and compete all of these organizations are I think going to be disrupted to some extent by innovations that are arriving now and so it's important for us to understand I think our own biases regarding how we want to see those things and how we may be wrong we may be right about them that's the other thing it's like I'm not gonna sit there and say hey your assumptions are wrong but but I do think a luck favors the prepared mind or something like that as an old saying chance favors the prepared mind and if you've thought about the possibility of something however surprising it may be if that thing happens you're much better prepared to deal with it than if you you just never thought that it would happen it's not possible you know an aircraft will never sink a battleship you know well if that's what you really believe about the world then when that thing happens that it's gonna take you a while to recover right as opposed to the person who's like yeah you know what I think that's entirely possible but if that happens here's how we would fight I'm interested in innovation specifically in complex adaptive systems and and innovations not just in terms of the the ways in which you operate but but strategy writ large you know what what constitutes a strategic innovation I think one thing that I would love for people to try to embrace about the world a world that is full of complex adaptive systems is the idea that whatever we do whatever we're gonna go out there and try to change is not final okay it is not a sport like the world is not a game okay it never like the competition it never ceases you are always required if you're trying to achieve some strategic objective you're always required to put some energy into it I think in American history there's this temptation to see war as sort of existing in some range and then and then it ceases and then there's peace and we hand out Hershey bars and there's a ticker tape parade and everybody goes home and it's all great war and peace both require a lot of energy we war we requires a lot of energy to end ok but peace requires a lot of energy to maintain if you ask like the New York Police Department hey New York police department did you guys win last year they wouldn't really understand the question that that's not what they're trying to do like they're trying to essentially maintain a kind of acceptable level of public order and safety I think that's actually the essential role of the military as well the military most of the time is trying to help with that the US military especially globally I mean if you think about our global force posture our treaty commitments East and West you know we have we have significant agreements that commits us to maintaining order and security in Europe and in Asia and sometimes I think that Americans we really want to solve problems but I don't think well I think most problems in complex adaptive systems aren't susceptible to solution you know the whole term like if you think about public safety in in law and order the drug war why is that a bad term right well the drug war suggests that you can win I don't think you can win it you can just actually get like say usage rates below a certain level you know reduce the flow of illegal narcotics and and try to reduce a crime that's associated with that but it's not like you're ever gonna say help it's over we won and and now we can wrap that up because we're gonna move on to something else it's never-ending it is a never-ending commitment now that said kind of going back to the New York Police Department example if you ask them hey did you guys win last year they wouldn't understand the question but if you ask them like are you guys trying to like prevent or police all crime everywhere at all times they would say no because they don't have the resources and neither does the United States so when I say hey these problems never end and we're not really trying to solve them so much as managed them that the the add-on is that we also have to make some hard choices about which problems we're really gonna try to manage we don't have the ability as a nation to do it everywhere and our all times and much of American history in the 20th century and in this current century concerned sort of a broad debate about which problems were worth dealing with you know that's that that push and pull between isolationism and intervention ISM hey we need to do something there no we don't you know it's not our problem blah blah blah blah right so what constitutes a cause for military intervention I can't possibly answer that question I mean that's a that's a complex that's a complex question but I do think it's worthwhile whatever we're deciding to always remember like that we're not so much going for a specific end state as we are for establishing kind of an acceptable condition on war room we have a podcast it's called a better peace I really like that term because I think it it captures its Basile little heart who came up with died ideas like why do you go to war you go to war to obtain a better peace [Music]

Channel: USArmyWarCollege

Views: 1,366

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Innovation, strategy, complex, adaptive, systems, USArmy, USAWC, ArmyWarCollege, War_Room, WARROOM

Id: FlzY93CyhOc

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018