ABSTRACT
We live in an age of social, commercial, scientific and technological acceleration, leading to disruptive innovations at ever-decreasing intervals. Rapid technological, social and environmental change threatens to overwhelm the ability of individuals, societies and governments to adapt to new realities. 1 The pace and impact of this technological churn is especially vexing for the US Navy because of the traditionally long duration of navy planning, acquisition and personnel cycles. Commercial innovation cycles seem to take somewhere between 18 months and five years to produce new products, procedures and entirely new commercial ecologies. 2 While the US Navy possesses the expertise and culture to integrate new technology into its forces and operations, in practice it usually takes between 15 and 30 years – roughly a generation. Owing to this protracted pace, the navy is at risk of falling short in the innovation race at some point between now and 2045, the long-range-planning target date established by the Pentagon.
