Implementing Innovation Series: Leading Innovative Organizations

As the third session in CSIS's Implementing Innovation Series, the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group will host a discussion between Dr. Harold Brown, former Secretary of Defense, and CSIS President and CEO Dr. John Hamre focused on the Department of Defense's legendary Second Offset and how best practices and lessons learned from this innovative approach may be leveraged to help tackle today’s problems. Following this discussion, Andrew Hunter will host a panel discussion on innovative organizations.

The Implementing Innovation Series is focused on moving the conversation in Washington about how to enable innovation in government beyond a discussion of technologies and into a discussion about how organizations foster innovation. All organizations experience change, and must be capable of adapting and innovating if they are to succeed. At the same time, all organizations face barriers to innovation and have incentives to resist or stymie change. The Implementing Innovation Series is designed to explore the areas and ways in which innovation can be tapped to bring about organizational change, particularly in public organizations.

The goal of the event is to identify the mechanisms which allow organizations to locate organizational problems that can be addressed by new approaches; dedicate resources and make the space necessary for new approaches to be explored, tested, and demonstrated; and adapt organizationally to get the benefits of new approaches when they are implemented.