In recent years, the U.S. federal government has signaled a clear need for closer collaboration with the private sector. In today’s era of rapidly evolving technological advancements, these partnerships are more important, urgent and consequential than ever before.
“Well, the good news is I would say we are collaborating. But we all agree that there’s more to do, just given how fast everything is moving,” said Judi Dotson, president of the global defense sector at Booz Allen Hamilton and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, during a new video interview with Executive Mosaic.
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Key Government Innovation Efforts
Dotson highlighted a few promising efforts and initiatives underway within the federal government to bolster commercial collaboration. First, the national defense strategy has provided a clearly communicated and outlined path for industry to take in its support of government missions.
“I think that the national defense strategy put out a framework that is very helpful for startups and other innovators,” said Dotson. “[It] makes it very clear that there’s a whole-of-nation approach that’s needed to be sure that we are working together to bring the best to our troops and to the best to the fight.”
Another example Dotson shared was the establishment of the Office of Strategic Capital in 2022. Dotson noted that OSC has been working to “help those companies that are developing critical technologies get the funding that they need” in order to support innovation in the defense landscape.
“Overall, the message from DOD is clear, it’s loud: Bring me your innovations,” Dotson said.
Barriers to Federal Innovation
While the innovation directive is loud and clear, there are still some hurdles that remain in achieving such innovation. One hurdle is around clarifying urgency and speed.
“Urgent threats in regions are not yet translating to the level of speed necessary to really achieve the deterrence that we need to put in place,” said Dotson. “DOD is working hard to change this, as is industry, but we still have to deal with realities like rigid multi-year planning cycles, like political consequences of failure.”
Dotson said that in the process of innovation, failure is not only inevitable but necessary. Today, there may be serious consequences for failure, but Dotson hopes that changes on a cultural level.
“We need to be able to fail fast and we need to be able to win together. And winning together means everybody coming together and bringing their best. And that isn’t really the way we’ve been aligned historically, but it’s certainly what we need going forward,” the Booz Allen president commented.