Article by Frank Wyatt from CREEW's News - April 2004
Building a Collaborative Innovation Dynamic in the Defence Community
The focus of this project was essentially to comprehend the extent and nature of the collaborative dynamic occurring within the Defence Community, how it is meeting the challenge of transformational change, leadership and building capability to capitalise on imminent opportunity. It was commissioned by the Defence Teaming Centre and Business SA.
The study reviewed the nature of collaboration occurring within the Defence Community of South Australia:
- what enables it and what frustrates it
- what it look like
- where the opportunities are for encouraging and enabling collaboration between firms and firms and public research organisations, and
- what will matter, in building upon the existing capacity of the defence community, to engage this dynamic and enable it to build a stronger collaborative culture?
The South Australian defence community is producing very sophisticated, highly adaptive and responsive systems integration squarely based in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In this, South Australia provides significant, if not national leadership, capability.
Our findings imply that:
- The scope of collaboration is minimal and significantly less than in a number of other Brand SA industries.
- A significant level of goodwill exists that could be captured and managed to build a stronger collaborative culture within the industry.
- The challenge of bridging the gap between science and technology and business and commercial outcomes is ongoing.
- The journey of building a Defence Community needs to be enjoined by those willing to share responsibility to each other in building its capability.
- The defence community lacks a long-term strategic vision similar to that which provides the road map for other industries. Its absence is a challenge to the possibility of defence becoming a strong brand sector for South Australia.
- Short term opportunism and competitive chauvinism is too prevalent, seriously eroding linkage between science and technology and business and commercial outcomes.
It would appear that many companies do not know who to collaborate with, why collaboration is the fastest growing way of doing business internationally, what will be the operating environment of collaborative arrangements, and/or how to manage in a collaborative context. In essence, many companies and Public Research Organisations are not ready for the future operating environment for business under the Commonwealth proposed Strategic Sector Plans and Capability Plan.
Research knowledge requires learning to rapidly transport it into commercial outcomes; this requires building opportunities between people for collaboration to occur.
Healthy competition and partnerships, knowledge sharing and its related learning through collaboration can all co-exist to produce an industry culture that integrates centres of excellence, links SMEs with major R&D providers, builds learning and value for and through customer/supplier co-relationships.
Such a culture is not strongly evident within the defence community and accordingly, unlike other industry sectors, there is little evidence of sufficient unity and collaboration that would result in a 20-30 year plan for its own future.
There is a lack of cohesive, integrated leadership of the strategic thinking and longer-term processes for the Defence Community, much of which is being left to governments to orchestrate on behalf of the Defence Community.
Building Collaboration
Most regional economies, and South Australia is no exception, are now host to three types of business model. The nature of the predominant business model or metaphor significantly influences the mindset and relationships that create the industry culture and operate to effect the propensity for collaboration.
The characteristics of the business models operating in South Australia and effecting its access to global economies are as follows:
- Global Primes based locally to access a larger slice of a domestic market and collaborating to the extent of supporting access to that domestic market, demonstrating some principles of corporate citizenship and sharing of market intelligence;
- Glocal Primes which operate in many markets with local offices and building global access via their value chains for SMEs enabling a sustainable architecture whilst building in country capability and self reliance; and
- Small to Medium companies often highly entrepreneurial, developing significant applications and systems. They are highly dependent upon either supply chain and/or collaborative contracting to gain access to markets domestic and global.
Both types of Prime exist within the South Australian context as demonstrated by their perception of the value of collaboration; in fact some act as both dependent upon the context. The predominance of SMEs within the Defence Community of South Australia then suggests that the industry will struggle to mount an independent R&D effort and global export mindset without a stronger culture of collaboration to build both education and research density and commercial outcome.
Those Primes that operate glocal business models will be faster to build self-reliance whereas those who utilise global business models will not effectively engage in future collaboration. SMEs can use this as one of the criteria for selecting whom to partner with; both will partner but their intent is critical to understand.
Further Findings
Our study also found that:
- The perception of the value of collaboration is generally low.
- In an industry that is strong in innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship (ICE), it is surprisingly low in flexibility, adaptiveness and responsiveness (FAR).
- Through its internationally connected public and private research
capability South Australia has enviable international opportunities
within the relatively small area of greater Adelaide.
A further strength is that proximity between companies and public researchers in global terms is immediate. - Neither the State Government nor some sections of industry seem sufficiently aware of the value to local industry of the presence of the DSTO with its commitment to building national research infrastructure nodes, principally within South Australia.
- The Systems Integration core capability has implications for collaboration with the Australian Defence Forces to ensure functionality in the acquisition system.
- It is our view that the Defence Community needs leaders who recognise the value of integrating both production and innovation within a 20 year over the horizon vision for producing commercial outcomes.
Unfortunately, too many of the Primes see South Australia as merely a base to access the domestic opportunity rather than leading South Australia into global markets within a long-term strategy.
What will enable collaboration?
The report also addresses what enables and frustrates collaboration. We aggregate the perception of those consulted as to what will enable greater collaboration and integrate this with international thinking about collaboration.
Broadly, what will build collaboration includes:
- Primes utilising glocal business models building collaborative engagement to enable a sustainable architecture for accessing the global market
- The quality of the relationships between the individuals within the community
- Shared values and vision
- Experience of positive collaboration building competency, intelligence and propensity for the next collaboration
- Building shared, equitable risk and outcomes especially in applied research
- Trust and relationship handshakes
What will frustrate collaboration? Broadly, what will frustrate collaboration includes:
- Primes utilising global business models to secure a bigger slice of the domestic market
- Fear within the culture of the community
- Not doing the hard yards to build trust in advance of the project engagement
- Inconsistent messages from companies and government
- Lack of collaborative competency and intelligence not knowing how to do it
- Regular turnover of staff around whom relationship was being developed
- Operating collaborations as though they were inclusive, rather than selective engagements based on shared values, vision and commercial outcome expectations
Research and Development
The defence community should be building an industry with over the horizon vision, integrating both production and export research and development with:
- Seamless innovation systems
- Investment in R&D collectively and individually
- Investment in people skills and real links with R&D providers
- Collaborative skills development
- Shared risk and outcomes between innovators and end user customers
- Growing export access and learning about export capability and global market expectations
- Co-operative effort to focus on pre-competitive science and technologies to enable the opportunity for larger breakthroughs
- Exciting opportunities for collaborative projects as no one company is big enough despite the inherent chauvinism - for it to make all things happen
DSTO is the primary defence public research organisation in Australia and it is based in South Australia; the potential of this geographical accessibility is not actualised to its fullest. DSTO is not only actively engaged in its own research program but also strategically investing significantly in other public research infrastructure based in South Australia building capability and strategic alliances with key Primes and linkages with and on behalf of SMEs.
Future research and development will increasingly be transnational in its modus operandi as DSTO electronically links research globally, activating opportunities in multiple countries and building collaboration glocally. The pattern of public research already suggests that the universities are providing greater contracted research beyond South Australia than within it.
Our report expands on all of these themes.
In comprehending the collaborative dynamic we see in the Defence Community, we outline opportunities the defence community could adopt to enhance existing capabilities with a stronger collaborative culture.
Our schedule of opportunities for building the capability of the Defence Community is based on:
- Entry Opportunities those which could usefully be implemented immediately
- Building Momentum Opportunities those we propose should be implemented once momentum is established
- Growth Opportunities those that will expand and enrich the collaboration.