Examining the Relationship between Strategy and Innovation Using “Ideas, Groups, and Tools (IGT)”

February 2019 No Comments

“Examining the Relationship between Strategy and Innovation Using ‘Ideas, Groups, and Tools (IGT)'”

Speaker: Lyle, D. (Air Education and Training Command (AETC) / Air University)

Date: 30 January 2019

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Lt Col Dave Lyle (Air Education and Training Command [AETC] / Air University) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Lt Col Lyle began his presentation by using an elephant metaphor to illustrate how people often fail to understand complexity and cognitive biases. He explained that US strategists and commanders need to design more teams and networks that share ideas, strive to identify what challenges organizations face, and determine what types of technology exist to help address these challenges. Lt Col Lyle also emphasized that diversity is the key to understanding what larger issues exist and stated that truth is often a social construct. He discussed the origins of the Ideas (i.e. doctrine, tactics, and concepts), Groups (i.e. organization, procedures, and people), and Tools (i.e. arms, equipment, hardware, and technologies) model, or “IGT,” which examines how the relationships between these three things change over time. He proceeded to define the term “strategy” and illustrate how a “strategist” thinks. Lt Col Lyle explained that strategists are “architectural assistants used in building adaptive social ecosystems” who need to be versatile and adapt to change. To conclude, Lt Col Lyle stated that the greatest challenges during past periods of revolutionary change have been primarily intellectual, not technical. The IGT model, he explained, can help US strategists address these challenges by encouraging them to “think about the entire innovation ecosystem before the pursue ill-matched organizational or technical solutions.”