Defence Innovation Initiative information
Updated 10 August 2017
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1. Defence Innovation Initiative
On 16 September 2016 the Secretary of State for Defence launched the Defence Innovation Initiative. The Defence and Security Accelerator (the Accelerator) and the Defence Innovation Fund (the Fund) are both key parts of Defence activity. Please follow the links for a brochure describing the Initiative and the text of the launch speech. The Fund, around £800 million over a 10 year period, has been established to provide the freedom to pursue and deliver innovative solutions. It will take forward the best proposals, from inside and outside of Defence, in an open competitive process. It will not seek to favour specific areas of innovation (for example technological, procedural) but will enable as broad a scope of innovation as possible. The Innovation Fund will use the Accelerator as a key means to deliver these outcomes.
“Revolutionise the human- information relationship for Defence” is the Fund’s first challenge competition. The way both the Fund and the Accelerator will be employed will have some experimental features as we want to achieve better or more innovative outcomes for Defence; particularly in the first 2 years. Not everything that we pilot will prove successful, and we will adapt based on experience and lessons learned.
We will introduce a number of new initiatives for the first Innovation Fund challenge:
1.1 Provide greater access to users
Lack of access to users has been identified as a major barrier to achieving better or more innovative outcomes in Defence. Greater opportunities will be provided to engage with users at the beginning of the competition and through the delivery of selected projects. We will also increase their contribution to our assessment of proposals. From this small start we hope to learn what works and seek to expand it in the future.
1.2 Be strategy driven
To take a systematic, strategy driven approach, Defence is aligning its innovation efforts with its broader goals and objectives. We have identified 7 Defence Challenges for Innovation which can be found in the Innovation Initiative brochure, and we have taken one of these – Understand and take Effective Decisions in the Information Age – as the source of this first Fund challenge. This leads to a broadly stated challenge, with a range of potential points of value for Defence.
1.3 Increased pace
A priority for Defence is to increase the pace at which innovation is developed and brought into service. We are therefore adopting a more compressed timescale, to support more rapid exploitation. Recognising that this is a change from previous practise, and not wishing to deter companies who may for good reason not be able to achieve this higher pace, we have retained the possibility of a standard timescale.
1.4 Focus on exploitation
In developing this challenge we have obtained sponsorship from MOD’s Joint Forces Command (JFC) with particular support from Navy Command. Army and Air Command will also be engaged in the delivery of this work. These organisations are responsible for solving many of Defence’s most pressing problems. A MOD-led team with staff from MOD’s procurement bodies and Front-line Commands, supported by an Innovation Partner from the Accelerator, will aim to maximise the exploitation of the output and generate the evidence to help secure subsequent MOD investment. We will also provide voluntary opportunities for developing relationships outside of the MOD with partner nations, including international defence markets, through engagement with the UK Defence Solutions Centre, and for adjacent UK sectors, with the Dual-Use Technology Exploitation programme.
1.5 Embrace risk
This challenge will deliberately only take forward propositions that offer very high value for Defence, either through a step-change in the outcomes they offer or through the ability to scale the solution across a wide spectrum of business areas or a combination of both. We will match that with a willingness to take forward propositions that are less certain of delivering a viable outcome. However, we will be more rigorous in stopping projects that do not continue to offer high value.