This is particularly true in military institutions which have recently experienced significant military successes, as the U.S. Army has in the Persian Gulf and in Haiti. Ideas that have the potential to overturn long-established, bureaucratically entrenched methods of operation are not welcomed by the average man. When the paradigm shifts, most cannot grasp the full potential of new ideas. New technologies and processes can frighten those who are comfortable with the routines established to accommodate the old technologies. Furthermore, vested interests within the organization and within its bureaucracy usually for what to them are good and logical reasons will resist ideas that threaten the status quo.
Bureaucracies flourish on procedures instituted to insure efficiency.
Innovation is the enemy of efficiency because it threatens established procedures. While military professionals must hold the security of the nation as something with which they dare not gamble, they cannot afford to discourage the kind of imagination and innovation that is needed to meet the varied challenges that will arise in the 21st century. History can be a help. Consider the struggle within the Navy for carrier aviation. Prior to its development, the existing naval paradigm held that decisive victory at sea depended upon capital ships engaging with cannon at visual range.