ABSTRACT

The pattern of innovation in the two cases which follow is remarkably similar to that of the two interwar cases. As before, it is possible to identify individuals who consciously redefined critical military tasks in response to changes in the strategic environment or in technology and who had a strategy for gaining control of the officer corps in order to implement the new way of war.1 Product champions created and managed architectural innovation groups to develop new ideas about the ways future wars would be fought and how they might be won. In managing the intellectual process, these reformers initially promoted air mobility in the Marine Corps by reaching out to fixed-wing aviators and nonaviators and convincing them that the change would sustain the established trajectories of performance improvement that senior military leaders historically had valued. Only after product champions had pioneered the innovation successfully did the change become disruptive and outperform the existing way of fighting.