After years working at various levels of government, Dr. Greg Bernard had become accustomed to lengthy delays and other obstacles in his quest for innovation. That is until he joined the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), a component of U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), where he served as Talent Portfolio Director and led a team responsible for changing the way the DOD solves problems through promoting innovation.
There, Bernard found an organization with what he called a “bold mandate” and leadership that said, “we are going to do this [innovate] and we are not going to let anyone stop us and we’re not going to veer off the path, and we’re going to do what it takes to get there.” The result of such support and determination, Bernard said, were outcomes “far beyond what I thought was possible.”
On August 29, the new Center for Homeland Defense and Security Director expounded on the importance of promoting innovation and offered thoughts on how to do so during CHDS’s August Alumni Hour.
An alum of the CHDS Master’s Program and co-founder of the CHDS Homeland Security Experimental (HSx) program, Bernard made his inaugural appearance as the Center’s director during the Alumni Hour event entitled “A Mindset for Innovation,” which was facilitated by CHDS faculty member Prof. Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez and Strategic Communications Director Heather Issvoran.
The remote event was held on Zoom and drew about 125 attendees.
After opening remarks by Issvoran, who reminded attendees about next year’s annual Alumni Professional Exchange (APEX) event which will be held Feb 18–20, 2025, CHDS Deputy Director Jodi Stiles led off the Alumni Hour by saying she appreciated the opportunity to serve as interim CHDS Director for the past year in the wake of longtime CHDS Director Glen Woodbury’s retirement and during the search for a replacement and introduced Bernard while noting that they had engaged in “a lot of conversations that really inspired me to think about homeland security.”
In response, Bernard thanked Stiles for her leadership as interim director.
During the ensuing question-and-answer session, Bernard spoke on a range of issues involving innovation in response to queries posed by Nieto-Gomez, Issvoran, and attendees.
He advised that those seeking to innovate should consider “de-risking” investments by employing strategies such as the use of minimum viable products, rapid prototyping, and similar strategies with the goal of completing a usable tool to solve one problem “really, really well,” essentially taking a more incremental approach rather than “trying to solve 50,000 problems.”
“One of the problems in the Innovation space is people tend to go for the big sexy,” he said. Instead, Bernard said to “take something small and fix it and then move on from there. It doesn’t have to be these silver bullets, these sexy, save-the-world type things. It can be about smaller things, smaller changes, incremental changes right now.”
Bernard said innovation should also focus on engaging users from the start rather than waiting until after development to see whether it will help.
He also suggested elevating action over planning using the concept of “build, measure, learn. Just do it,” he said. “Stop planning and just do it. Learn by doing.”
As for promoting innovation, he said it is “incumbent upon leadership to create this permissive environment” where people are encouraged to take risks.
“We need to recognize, especially in the national security and homeland security mission space, that our enemies are adapting, the world is adapting, and if we’re not able to change, we’re not going to be able to handle it,” Bernard said.
Recalling a soccer shirt he wore as a kid with the saying, “My Goal is to Deny Yours,” Bernard said sometimes it can seem like some middle managers have that as their motto, and he advised that it takes “bravery and commitment” and occasionally “asking for forgiveness, not asking for permission to just go do things and at the end you have something to show for it.”
Noting an organization called the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum refers to itself as a Virtuous Insurgency, Bernard said sometimes “you have to not break the rules but bypass the rules to get that success.”
Asked who the end users of innovation are at CHDS, Bernard said it “depends on the problem you’re trying to solve. It’s the idea of constant Improvement. I want to improve the experience of students at the Center, so for those activities that we’re pursuing it’s the students that are the users. I want to improve the team dynamic and the experience of faculty and staff, so users are going to change depending on what the problem is.”
Finally, Bernard offered his “Top 11” list of mistakes organizations make that hamper innovation:
- Putting innovation under the CTO/CIO
- Thinking that innovation (innovative thought/talent) must come from outside the organization
- Putting the innovation initiatives under the traditional budgeting process
- Isolate the innovation function (exclusivity)
- Not providing a safe space for experimentation/doing things differently
- “We’re good, we don’t need it”
- Calling for ideas, but not following through with anything
- Going it alone or competing, rather than partnering, collaborating, and learning from each other
- Relying entirely on personalities
- Thinking “dog and pony” shows (innovation rodeos/petting zoos) are enough
- Disproportionate effort in building exciting, but not supporting logistics
In conclusion, Bernard said he had been “working so hard” to return to CHDS since he graduated because he “just wanted to be a part of it,” and he said he expected most of the alumni in attendance felt similarly, and he urged them to share their ideas for the Center. “Reach out, I’m excited to explore and figure it out,” he said. “There are a lot of possibilities.”
The next Alumni Hour is scheduled for Sept. 20.
