Campaigns of Experimentation: Pathways to Innovation and Transformation

摘要

This book, the seventh in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (OASD), Command and Control Research Program's (CCRP) series on Information Age Transformation, addresses a critical core competency for a 21st century military, or for that matter any organization that needs to embrace disruptive innovation to survive. This core competency is the ability to successfully undertake campaigns of experimentation designed to result in disruptive innovation. This book is a logical follow-on to the 'Code of Best Practice for Experimentation,' which was focused on the design and conduct of individual experiments. That book introduced the idea of a campaign of experimentation and compared and contrasted the differences between an individual experiment and a campaign of experimentation. The ability to design and conduct individual experiments constitutes a necessary but not sufficient core capability to conceive, design, and conduct successful campaigns of experimentation. Thus, the purpose of this book is to build upon the discussions in the earlier 'COBP for Experimentation' and explain in greater detail the nature of a campaign of experiments, how these campaigns should be effectively conceived, designed, and executed, and how their results can be harvested in the context of the ongoing transformation of military organizations and operations. While discussions of campaigns of experimentation have broad applications, this book focuses on transformational campaigns that seek breakthroughs in knowledge or capability, rather than those designed to marginally improve or refine our knowledge or a given capability. In the vernacular of innovation, this book focuses on the role and conduct of campaigns of experimentation that involve disruptive innovation, rather than sustaining innovation. These campaigns are inherently more complex and involve greater risk than those focused on sustaining innovation, but they have correspondingly greater potential.