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Getting a big, bureaucratic organization to innovate or adopt new technologies is hard. That’s why Harvard Business School professor Maria Roche wrote a case study about U.S. Air Force Major Victor “SALSA” Lopez. He helped launch a program that uncovers ways to use AI to strengthen U.S. defense efforts. Professor Roche and Major Lopez talked about the challenges of fostering innovation within a large bureaucracy in a conversation with host Brian Kenny on Cold Call back in 2023.
BRIAN KENNY: Maria, I’m going to start with you. Can you just tell us what the central issue is in the case, and what your cold call is when you start the discussion in class?
MARIA ROCHE: Of course. So, the real central issue in the case is thinking about the perils of digital transformation in a large bureaucratic organization as you already mentioned. And so this also falls under a broader theme of innovation. So often we think it’s only small organizations that can innovate, startups, but a lot of innovation actually comes out of these big organizations. And so thinking about the trade-offs also of how you organize it and set it up, because in a large organization, you may have to do it in a bit of a different way than in a startup. The cold call to really get started in the case is thinking about, is it the right choice to set up the AI Accelerator as an innovation unit outside of the organization? And then after that, we really want to dig in because it’s not clear that this is really the best way to do it.
BRIAN KENNY: How did you hear about this, and why did you decide to write the case?
MARIA ROCHE: So, I decided to write the case because one of my MBA students who I taught in the Required Curriculum in strategy came to me with this idea because he was a fellow in the AI Accelerator, and had all this great experience. I was like, “Of course, this is so nice. This is the best experience you can have actually writing with an MBA student, a case about this.” So we dug right into it. And it’s also really close to my own research because I’m a strategy scholar, and I’m an innovation scholar at heart. So for me, really thinking about these questions of how can you incentivize innovation, how can you actually adopt these new technologies is core to my research. So it was like the perfect match, and then we got started.
BRIAN KENNY: I would venture to guess that most people don’t think about innovation and DOD in the same sentence, right?
MARIA ROCHE: No.
BRIAN KENNY: So, I’m wondering, I think people might be surprised to know that the DOD does invest heavily in this. Can you talk a little bit about their commitment to finding ways to be innovative?
MARIA ROCHE: This also goes back to one of my research projects that is looking at the Rad Lab, which was stood up in World War II. It was actually one of the first times you have big science happening in the United States, and it was powered by the military, and it happened right here. The legacy still lives on today in the Lincoln Lab, and also part of AFWERX, and the AI Accelerator. They touched upon these things that were happening in the 1940s, and that’s really when things started with military support for research. But there’s many more examples, I’m happy to tell you more later on.
BRIAN KENNY: Can you list us a couple?
MARIA ROCHE: Of course. There are so many, so I cherry-picked a couple because I’m like, “Which ones are the best ones?” So one of them is the field of material science that actually came out of government-funded research, thinking about how to create this new field. Another are the first weather satellites. The world’s first large scale project on personal computing in the 60s called Project MAC, also government. You had the first computer mouse. No, it was not Apple, it was government-funded research. You had the first mobile robot that walked around using AI, actually, also a long time ago called Shakey. ARPANET, without that, we wouldn’t have the internet. We also have the Personal Assistant that Learns, PAL. Without that, we wouldn’t have Siri. GPS. SEMATECH, which was fundamental in creating the semiconductor industry the way we have it now. And so I can go on.
BRIAN KENNY: No, I mean, that’s a huge sort of legacy of innovation within a place that’s not really given credit for that, I guess, in popular…
