Maintaining a culture of innovation in the IDF

(Israel Defense Forces)

Michal Frenkel

Head of the innovation branch at the innovation combat methods division of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces)

For many organizations, the Covid-19 crisis served as a wakeup call to establish internal mechanisms and systems that would make it more flexible and open to innovation. We had a conversation with Michal Frenkel, Head of the innovation branch at the innovation combat methods division of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), to discuss the experience of the IDF during the pandemic and what learnings other organizations can adopt from that experience.

Tell us a bit about your role and what your branch does within the IDF.

Coincidentally, my branch was founded in early 2020 just as the pandemic reached Israel, which was perfect timing. Historically, the IDF has a culture of soldiers in compulsory service and officers in the field at various areas of the organization trying to solve problems in unusual ways in order to get results. So while there’s already a history of innovation in the IDF, the innovation branch aims to establish structures and mechanisms that can support such efforts.

Can you give examples of such structures and mechanisms?

During the pandemic, we had dozens of projects taking place independently at various units in the IDF being led by soldiers and commanders in the field in a bottom-up dynamic. The main role that I undertook at that moment was to connect the various parties to one another and to related parties external to the IDF, such as the ministry of health and the ministry of defense. This with the purpose of making sure that everyone knew what the others were doing, could help each other and also avoid duplications i.e. working on the exact same thing in parallel. At one point in time, for example, we had five or six projects trying to manufacture ventilators which were at a shortage. We actually were running a Whatsapp group which created a flat model of sharing and communications for this purpose. So that is one example of the way the innovation branch seeks to support innovation activities.

Another example would be that from our position my team and I had visibility to what was happening in the field and at the same time, we had access to decision makers. This means that we could generate awareness among decision makers regarding projects that were taking place and had promise and as a result, similarly to a non-formal VC, provide executive support and funding to projects that needed it urgently. Another thing we did was to remove bureaucratic barriers as we did for the project that sought to establish a Covid testing lab within the IDF. This amounted to establishing a new unit within the IDF at a very high level of urgency since at the time civilian testing capabilities were limited and the IDF did not want its testing requirements to come at the expense of the civilian population. Moreover, the purpose was to provide the civilian population with the capabilities that this project would deliver. Many people think that the most important thing for innovation initiatives within organizations is money. Generating executive visibility for such projects and assisting with obstacle removal can be much more important and challenging than acquiring funding.

I can say that what began as informal activities driven by the Covid crisis has matured since then into more established procedures that are being implemented today.

What would you say are the key learnings you took from the Covid crisis that should be applied for the longer term?

There are three key learnings that I think are relevant:

If no one is doing it - solve it yourself

Whenever I speak to commanders and soldiers, I tell them that the IDF is filled with people who get up in the morning and are driven to do whatever it takes to accomplish the job at hand. One must always look for problems that need solving and if no one is working on a solution, they should become that person and solve it themselves.

This is great but is the need real?

Whenever I encounter an individual with an idea I start by giving them positive feedback and then ask them about the validity of the need they’re addressing. Is your idea solving a real problem? During Covid, it was all about talking to doctors and verifying that the problem being solved was a real one. This becomes more challenging when the problem you are solving is not directly related to your daily activities and your area of expertise.

The value of expertise

One of the essential things for innovators to understand is the value of expertise. One can have the best of intentions and a tremendous drive but at the end of the day, there’s a need for domain expertise related to the idea being promoted. During Covid this would have been lab experts, Doctors, virologists etc’ and now as innovation is being applied to other areas in the IDF we have learned the value of connecting people to the experts that they need in order to be successful.

So having learned these lessons, can you share some of the activities that you are doing today in order to apply them going forward?

We just launched the IDF innovation center in cooperation with the digital division and the R&D division within the ministry of defense. It serves as an innovation hub with several tracks, each having a certain number of innovation projects being driven by dedicated teams. We are about to open this to any soldier in the IDF who will be able to get accepted by proposing ideas that can have a significant potential impact. If you get accepted, you become an entrepreneur in residence and get the opportunity to turn your idea into reality.

Another platform we are establishing is one of exposure and recognition which is the chief of staff innovation award. This allows recognition of members of the IDF for innovation related efforts and this, in turn, creates awareness at the soldier and commander level that innovation is important and that it receives executive attention and priority.

In addition, we have a network of innovation leaders across the various corps of the IDF whose job it is to identify and collect ideas from the field and to empower the soldiers with those ideas, connect them to experts and help them in various ways. We as the innovation branch of the IDF serve as the hub that connects these innovation leaders together and assists where needed. We also are the address for those leaders in cases where there’s a promising idea that is significant enough in scope to be a candidate for the IDF innovation hub that I mentioned earlier. We have found this approach so effective that we’re now starting to recruit dedicated innovation leaders as an official role in addition to those leaders who emerged in the field, which are usually in permanent positions and are doing this in addition to their official role. So the IDF will soon have a population of full-time, dedicated innovation soldiers serving as leaders across the organization, serving as ambassadors, connectors and professional supporters of innovation.

I imagine that in a hierarchical, mission-driven organization like the IDF, the average commander doesn’t have the bandwidth or patience to be open to innovative ideas that often sound far-reaching when first presented. How do you deal with such a challenge?

Firstly, the fact that the current IDF chief of staff is very openly promoting innovation serves as a strong leadership push from above that is very clear to commanders across the organization. Secondly, we offer commanders training and personal development programs to provide them with the knowledge and skill they need to encourage innovation and promote it. We are in the process of establishing an innovation college in cooperation with the Israeli open university where IDF commanders will be able to complete an MBA majoring in innovation management.

Any final message to your innovation management peers in other organizations?

I believe that innovation management in hierarchical organizations both military and civilian have a lot to learn from one another. It should be encouraging to innovation managers in any organization that the IDF can promote and execute innovation. If it’s possible in such challenging environments using leadership and consistent efforts, it should be possible in every organization.