The process of innovation requires the articulation of a vision of how a technology or operational concept can be used to gain a significant advantage in the future competitive environment. Understanding the technological opportunities, articulating the vision, and actually implementing that vision constitute the essence of the transformation process. Innovators can expect to be confronted by the simple reality that the need has not yet been articulated in an acceptable way and that consent to the indicated changes in methods, organization, careers, etc., is being withheld. Becoming an Adaptive Organization. Despite the natural impediments to change, many organizations do innovate successfully.
History offers broad insights into the pathway to success.
Foremost among these is that militaries that have been particularly innovative have tended to focus more on the process than the product. Rather than attempting to build forces for predicted futures, they created organizations that could adapt successfully and rapidly to many possible paths and developments. Efforts at transformation must focus on recognizing, developing, and guiding emergent behavior that will position the enterprise favorably for an unknown and unpredictable future that is also recognized as emergent. This theoretical discussion of transformation, however, leaves us with many questions, which must be worked out on a continuing basis. These issues and others are being addressed here at the Naval War College.