Militaries need to be as innovative and creative in drafting strategies to counter a potentially cunning adversary as they are in retaining existing efficiencies, processes and social norms for the organisation. However, modern militaries are continuously chastised for our lack of imagination and inability to shake institutional beliefs that are obsolete or irrelevant. Here, we explore how and why militaries stifle new ideas and consider the pattern of outright rejection of novelty and punishment of unorthodox thinking in war. Heretics and visionaries tend to be ignored or worse, until they end up being vindicated after the fact, which then predictably converts into a retroactive acceptance and championing of innovative thinking in conflicts. This paper is the first in a four-part series on innovation and takes a philosophical approach to framing this challenge for defence organisations.
Ben Zweibelson (Mon,) studied this question.