Photo By Dustin Q. Diaz | Garth Jensen (right, front), Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division’s...... read more read more
Employees at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division (NSWCCD) are getting an opportunity to present their innovative ideas with the support of a command-wide initiative open now until June 2.
Garth Jensen, the command’s director for innovation, hosted a call for fiscal year 2018 proposals for the Technical Director’s Innovation Challenge (TDIC) during a brown bag May 11 featuring a presentation with information about the program and a question-and-answer session for interested employees.
“TDIC is open to all members of the workforce, it can be applied to any field, and it operates on the premise that business process and policy innovation is just as valid as technological innovation. The real work of innovation is in the transformation of practice,” Jensen said. “Senior leadership does not have a monopoly on the answers or even the questions that need to be asked. TDIC addresses this gap while simultaneously tapping into the passion and ingenuity of the workforce.”
NSWCCD Technical Director Dr. Tim Arcano created the TDIC in 2014 after his initial engagements with the Carderock workforce indicated a level of anxiety over the difficulties involved with innovating and a hunger for opportunities to conduct entrepreneurial innovative activity. The aim of the challenge is to stimulate innovation across all of Carderock’s technical and business areas: concept development, science and technology, research and development, test and evaluation, fleet support, in-service engineering, acquisition support, logistics research and development and business processes.
The TDIC is modeled after Google’s 20 Percent Concept of authorizing employees to spend 20 percent of their working time exploring innovative concepts to inspire creativity and increase productivity, and has a low barrier to entry, according to Jensen.
“Prospective participants submit a two-page proposal, answering a mix of preformatted and open-ended questions,” Jensen said. “Proposers are required, at a minimum, to identify and aim to address stakeholder needs, but TDIC sets itself apart from most programs in that these needs may be perceived or unperceived by the stakeholder.”
These stakeholders can include, but are not limited to, Navy warfighters and maintainers, the Office of Naval Research, contract and information technology functions, or any other area of Carderock’s expertise. The brown bag was a restart of the TDIC and the first opportunity for Carderock employees to have their ideas heard for this go-round.
“You can be a member of a tech code and still submit a business-related proposal, and vice versa,” said Jensen. “If you can envision a better world in contracting, security, information technology, anything – feel free to make those proposals.”
When these employees submit their proposals, a small council will meet to recommend participants, with Arcano making the final selection. Participants will progress through three phases: concept exploration, concept maturation and concept implementation. From the beginning to the end of the first phase, proposers retain latitude to deviate from the original proposal if the research compels them in a different direction.
Projects will be awarded more funding from a mix of discretionary overhead and Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE) program/Section 219 funding at each stage, which concludes with a brief to the TDIC panel.
The brown bag also covered how to tailor a proposal to increase its chances of selection and included a question-and-answer session. Interested participants are welcome to attend the final outbrief in the Maritime Technology Information Center auditorium at 1 p.m. June 1, the day before the submission deadline for the current round of proposals. For more information on TDIC, contact Jensen at at 301-227-0032 or garth.jensen@navy.mil.
| Date Taken: | 05.11.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 05.22.2017 10:02 |
| Story ID: | 234689 |
| Location: | WEST BETHESDA, MD, US |
| Web Views: | 146 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Carderock technical director challenges employees to innovate, by Dustin Q. Diaz, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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