16 June 2023

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On Predicting Military Innovation: Understanding its nature and timing could guide investment in technologies and organizational change. I explore the question of whether we can predict the nature and timing of military innovation through Cohen, March, and Olsen’s classic (1972) model of the “organized anarchy” of bureaucratic decision-making. I extend their model by leafing into their variables known factors of military innovation found in the literature. I consider how Military problems (needs) have political, bureaucratic and financial aspects. Innovative solutions have technological, doctrinal, organizational, industrial, and financial aspects. Decision-makers match those solutions to their problems, but only through implementing military bureaucracies. The windows of opportunity for innovative choices can be fleeting. Post-war recoveries, arms-control treaties, reorganizations, changes in legislators and leaders, and budgetary cycles all provide openings for change. I conclude that such a framework, implemented in a mathematical model, may help both predict and explain how and when military innovations occurs. Required next is a great deal of reading and variable-coding, and some modest degree of mathematical modeling. I will develop this into a research project as resources are available. For now, download my nine-page working paper through the link below. Comments by e-mail ([email protected]) are most welcome. Download On Predicting Military Innovation 20230608

James Hasik

Political economist of innovation, industry, and international security

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