Report from the Front!
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now in its 10th month and represents the largest land battle in Europe since the second world war. Ukraine is out-gunned and out-numbered, yet Russia is turning out to be Goliath to Ukraine’s David. What can we learn?
1. The horizontal advantage
Aside from arms support from NATO, the Ukrainian army is proving to be more innovative than its much larger adversary. The reasons for this may be political and cultural. On the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia on 19th December 2022, the Guardian’s Julian Borger, interviewed a computer expert at the Ukraine defence ministry’s centre for innovation and development of defence technologies. He said Ukraine had a natural advantage as it had a younger, less hierarchical political culture. “The biggest differences between the Russian army and Ukrainian army are the horizontal links between the units,” the computer expert said. “We are winning mainly because we Ukrainians are naturally horizontal communicators.”
In warfare as in business, increasing the capacity for horizontal communication confers a tactical advantage. Over-reliance on vertical communication stifles innovation and responsiveness.
2. The agile advantage
The innovation centre in Zaporizhzhia is working on Delta, a software package to help collect and disseminate information about the enemy’s movements and distribute it to the battlefield in real time. Staff have been mostly drawn from a volunteer organisation of drone operators and programmers from the private sector who were mobilised to serve in the army. “These were not bureaucrats from the defence ministry”, a spokesperson said. “They started to make Delta with their own minds and hands, because they had this culture of agile development. The creative process has a short circle. You develop it, you test it, you launch it.”
This is also the entrepreneurial mindset; finding creative solutions which can be developed, tested, and launched quickly. Speed and willingness to learn from protypes is at the heart of innovation.
3. The disruptive advantage
Yet it’s a struggle to change a bureaucratic organisation into an innovative one. The Ukraine defence’s ministry’s centre for innovation and development of defence technologies has had to fight for its existence in a military culture imposed by its Soviet predecessors. They have suffered from lack of coordination and even friendly fire. But out of chaos they have built a unit which could be quarantined from the traditional army and given resources to experiment in how to disrupt the battlefield using computer code.
It’s the same in business. Disruption can create competitive advantage if handled well. But the old culture must be prevented from suffocating innovation. Small centres of excellence can be set up to try out the new technologies which will ultimately disrupt the market. Entrepreneurs know how to fail forward, fail fast, and fail frugally.
“This is the big story we are writing that will change the war,” said the Ukraine defence ministry’s centre for innovation and development of defence technologies spokesperson. “Our weapons are computers. Our bullets are information.”
How well is your company or government agency employing these three dimensions of innovation? Find out more here
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