Implementing the DoN 30 Year R&D Plan

Abstract

Project Summary: Navy leaders are concerned about the impact of accelerating rates of change on the Navy's effectiveness. They want to foster a culture of learning, collaboration, and innovation to increase lethality. The Department of Navy's (DoN) Thirty Year R&D Plan proposes a strategy to increase our technological advantage & maritime superiority in an increasingly dynamic security environment. The Naval Research and Development (R&D) Enterprise (NRDE) is integral to expanding the Navy's technical capability and assuring military advantages now and in the future. We hypothesize that optimally positioned communities of interest (COIs) can act as a driving force in accelerating organizational culture change. We explored enabling factors to produce collaboration-based culture change and provided recommendations to improve the implementation of the R&D Plan. We developed practices to catalyze COI efforts to implement the R&D Plan as we explored ways leaders can implement a long-term strategy by fomenting and sustaining organizational culture change. We focused on discovery, discussion, fostering collaboration, and building connections across naval institutions. We concluded that changing culture requires aligning aspects of an organization to create an internal environment conducive to the desired changes. Leaders need to communicate the desired change and model the behaviors they want to instill. Creating a cross-organizational community requires cultivating opportunities that build interest, participation, and reward engagement in order to attract and retain participants. Communication platforms, forums, and educational opportunities need to be available to the COI. Informal systems require compatible rewards, often intrinsic, that enable people to be active participants who can promote and take pride in the desired changes.