WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- During a recent National Security Innovation Network Bootcamp iteration, members of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center showcased their dedication to affecting positive change within NASIC in support of the organization’s mission to enable full-spectrum multi-domain operations.
NSIN Bootcamp equips participants with the tools and methodologies that underpin the design thinking process, enabling them to properly identify and tackle organizational challenges.
In an initiative to foster innovative solutions and problem-solving prowess at their organization, NASIC recruited the NSIN Bootcamp team to hold a five-day event at the Wright Brothers Institute in Dayton, Ohio.
A key theme of the week was, “don’t fail in a way that you could have predicted.” To do this, the NASIC team prepared to get outside of their organizational norms and think differently using the Bootcamp framework, discovering and characterizing air, space, missile, and cyber threats, driving weapon system acquisition, and informing national defense policy in new ways.
"My teammates and I met up for the first time at the Bootcamp, and with our very diverse backgrounds – cyber, human intelligence, coders and developers, active duty and civilian – [we] were able to quickly establish good rapport and bounce ideas off one another as we began to work on our team project. Our unique perspectives aided us in thinking outside the box to propose different approaches to the challenge," shared Todd Gleghorn, a Principal Technical Advisor at NASIC.
This Bootcamp iteration, held from March 25-29, saw active participation from service members and civilians alike as they worked to break down silos and enhance collaboration, transparency, and data utilization within NASIC. At the core of the event was their problem statement, "How might we accelerate our ability to deliver winning strategies, programs, and plans – and assure that our subject matter expertise is more than the sum of our individual experts – by addressing our inconsistencies in our analytic processes, tradecraft, methodologies, and institutional memory?"
“This Bootcamp combines the principles of human-centered design with the real task of investigating a challenge statement, unearthing what problems exist at the root of the challenge, and designing pathways forward for solutions,” said Nic Meliones, the Co-Founder and CEO of Navi, one of NSIN’s Bootcamp delivery partners.
One of the ways participants avoided failing in a way they could have predicted was to crowd-source their understanding of potential pitfalls to their solutions. To do this, they conducted a staggering 73 user interviews. These interviews informed participants’ insights into their colleagues’ pain points and their hopes. They then worked in cross-functional teams to address the challenges with proposals for solutions.
By the end of the event, teams had devised four solutions. The solutions suggested mapping communities of interest (COIs) and their existing solutions and tools, better formalizing meetings for greater impact, creating a rubric for assessing flight and squadron performance, and defining data sets as products and assigning product owners with greater ownership and responsibility over them.
"We frequently make one of the same two errors: either admiring our problems indefinitely or marrying ourselves to the first good idea without developing other options. These Bootcamp participants spent deliberate time in each phase of human-centered design, gaining a sense of when to dig deeper into the problem and when to test a solution. This experience will enhance their abilities to affect positive changes, advancing NASIC's mission through innovation and collaboration," explained Scott Rodgers, Digital Transformation Principal Technical Advisor.
Engagement with Bootcamp is not the first time NASIC and NSIN have collaborated to further innovation and problem solving.
"NASIC has been an NSIN mission partner since 2019, taking advantage of multiple NSIN Programs over the last five years to tackle challenges facing their organization ranging from [undertaking] problem validation via Hacking for Defense, to filling their hard-to-fill billets via NSIN’s former Hirethon program, to this Bootcamp which looked at improving analytic processes and information sharing,” Ian Haynes, NSIN Regional Engagement Principal for Ohio explained.
Following multiple sessions of ideation and refinement, participants pitched their solutions to NASIC senior leadership and members of the Future Capabilities and Assessments Directorate for continued advocacy.