Insights gleaned from the 2019 Red Queen Innovators Offsite - Hosted by BMNT's CEO Pete Newell & Steve Blank this is a two-day gathering of innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and academics involved in defense innovation and scaling dual-use technology companies

1. RED Queen II Insights
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

2. Insights from
Group Discussions
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

3. Innovation needs to be a connected process - not
individual heroics or disconnected activities
• We need to continuously Source people, problems, and technologies
at scale to ensure an adequate output in Transition (anecdotal
evidence suggests a 250:1 ratio from one end of the pipeline to the
other)
• Discipline during Curation allows for better problems to enter
Discovery and move into solution building at Incubation
• We need to better align innovation activities to allow leaders to
efficiently apply resources to develop the most promising projects
and redirect resources away from others
“It takes years and years of doing great work to build a strong Innovation Pipeline”
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

4. In seeking support it's more important to focus on
mission outcomes, not the process of “doing”
innovation
• The objective of the innovation pipeline is to deliver mission impact -
continuously
• Good story-telling backed by data is key to gaining buy-in and support
from peers, partners and senior leader champions
• Examples of how successful impacts occurred by using the innovation
pipeline are more useful than discussions on innovation processes
“An example of successful innovation is way more useful than a process”
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

5. While innovation in government is no longer
“mission impossible,” it will always be hard
• Recognition in the 2018 National Defense Strategy that “Innovation
capacity is seen as a cornerstone of meeting future defense needs”
has helped
• Innovation initiatives have grown across each department of the DoD
+ IC, however, early adopters are still driving innovation activities in
cells - innovation pipelines have yet to scale throughout the
enterprise
• To make necessary changes to deal with the Red Queen problems,
innovation needs to port over to the enterprise
“Innovation is ***ing hard, it's a roller coaster ride that you never get off of”
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

6. Metrics drive success
• What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get done
• Have well-defined metrics will act as top cover when undertaking
rapid learning and setbacks
• Metrics backed by real data are key to building stories to gain peer
and senior leader support
• Saving time (human capital $) is an important metric to capture
“You have to collect data early in the pipeline to have empirical reasoning for making hard decisions”
"Tie your metrics to your vision - If your metrics don't help you make a decision, they're useless”
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

7. It’s important to identify offramp
opportunities at each phase of the pipeline
• Organizations might not do all phases of the Innovation Pipeline on their
own. If there is another entity handling a different phase, it’s critical to
establish alignment
• Discipline between the different phase gates of the pipeline creates higher
chance of offramping valuable outputs to other pipelines and for
transitioning solutions at the end of your pipeline
• After problem sourcing, the next steps for each problem, even if not part of
the Pipeline, should be considered a measurable output of the Innovation
Pipeline
• Offramp possibilities can be a requirement or modification to an existing
program. It could result in jumping to another pipeline, or being
determined that there is an existing capability that could solve this
problem
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

8. Insights by Phase of the
Innovation Pipeline
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

9. Source
• Establish achievable goals for the team and leadership - hold people
accountable to determined metrics
• Build multiple tools/resources to source people, problems, and
technology to ensure a better pipeline throughput
• Continuously source problems - sourcing is not a one time activity
• Train employees on the activities, methodologies, and tools to source
people, problems, and technology to ensure a health input to the
source stage
• Establish clear, measurable metrics and data to monitor sourcing
input to determine what passes through the next part of the pipeline
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

10. Curate
• Establish a repeatable, reliable prioritization methodology to triage
the most pressing problems
• Talk to those most affected by the problem to ensure you build the
correct solution
• Interview multiple experts in the problem area to understand the
scope of your solution
• Be willing to pivot from the original problem statement and change
your solution pathway iteratively based on the data collected
• A dedicated, passionate problem owner is the most important part of
moving a problem into Discovery
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

11. Discover
• The right team is critical in validating or invalidate your solution
assumptions
• Gather organizational support to get your validation teams resources such
as manpower, physical space, and funding
• MVP iterations and testing ensures you are pushing the correct solution
into incubation
• Not being ‘married’ to your initial solution is key to iterative building a
desired solution
• The problem owner is vital in this stage as they will be the one to push (or
drag) the proposed, validated solution to the incubation and transition
team
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

12. Incubate
• Determine metrics to insert your validated solution into an existing
program based on validated IRL, TRL, and ARL
• Connect with outside partners to improve and expedite incubation
process and create investible entities
• Solutions that have validated IRL, TRL, and ARL are the ones to move
to prototype development
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

13. Transition
• Leadership must support the off ramping from the innovation team to
the transition team to fit the solution into the white space between
programs
• Leadership should be able to provide written exceptions to reduce
barriers in deploying the solution into the field
• The time you spend in the transition stage is related to the level of
the problem (Horizon 1, 2, or 3 - H3 will be longer)
• High performance early in the pipeline equates to more solutions
transitioned
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

14. Insights from the
Pipeline Self Assessment
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

15. Innovation Pipeline Phase Insights
• Overall Pipeline score for the group was (2.5/5)
• Highest Pipeline sub-activity was “Activities executed to generate output” during
the Sourcing phase
• Lowest Pipeline sub-activity was “Establishing success metrics during the
Transition phase”
• Overall trends:
• The group scored highest in the Source and Discovery phases (2.8/5)
• The score during Curation was slightly lower (2.6)
• Incubation (2.4) was even lower, which suggests that a breakdown in Curation allows
uncrated problems to enter Discovery
• This can explain why Transition was the lowest score (1.9) - uncurated problems have a low
chance of transitioning to end users
Takeaway: Poor performance early in the pipeline limits Transition opportunities
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

16. Category Specific Insights (1)
• Commercial entities scored higher overall, making them valuable
partners in developing an innovation system (or doctrine?)
• Senior leaders rated higher than Managers and SMEs in the first three
steps of the pipeline (Source, Curate, Discover)
Takeaway: Sr. Leaders have more visibility into “Problem” specific
phases - Sourcing problems, making Prioritization decisions, deciding
what gets Discovered
• Recommendation: Communicate priorities and set metrics early in
the IP process
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

17. Category Specific Insights (2)
• SMEs rated higher than Senior leaders and Managers in the last two
steps (Validate, Transition)
Takeaway: SMEs are involved in the “Solution” specific phases - They
are narrowly focused on delivering a solution to Transition.
Breakdown between the two leads to “solutions” being developed for
unvetted problems, leading to low adoption.
• Recommendation: Involve SMEs earlier in the IP so they can inform Curation
and Discovery
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

18. Common themes in the free answer fields
• Defining of goals early is crucial to transitioning project
• Operational support is not a strong suit
• The later in the pipeline the more challenging it becomes as there
is less experience in moving projects along
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019

19. Metadata told us
• Where organizations already have a pipeline of activities, the key is
connecting these activities into an evidence based, data driven
system which ensures mission-centric output
• The Self-Assessment allowed participants to break down their
Innovation Pipeline phases into actionable steps
• The Self-Assessment gave an unbiased framework for viewing
Innovation Pipeline health
• Each Innovation Pipeline phase has multiple sub components which
determine the health of the overall phase- the innovation pipeline
provides rigor to innovation programs
Source: Red Queen II Innovators Offsite – March 2019