Our expertise

We support decisions about military needs, industrial opportunities, innovation strategy, organisation, partnerships and professional competence.

Our expertise

We support decisions about military needs, industrial opportunities, innovation strategy, organisation, partnerships and professional competence.

Our expertise

We support decisions about military needs, industrial opportunities, innovation strategy, organisation, partnerships and professional competence.

01

Research & Studies

Research &
Studies

Decisions about defence innovation often have to be made with incomplete evidence about user needs, institutional conditions or the development of a market. A new technology field may be visible long before its military applications, industrial structure or implications for an organisation are well understood.

We work with leaders responsible for strategy, business development, capability development and organisational change. Each study starts with the decision they face: whether to enter a defence market, which military needs to address, which capabilities and partnerships to build, or how to develop an innovation organisation. Through interviews, document analysis and qualitative inquiry, we examine the evidence behind these choices.

02

Strategic Foresight

Strategic
Foresight

Choices about products, military capabilities and organisational development rest on assumptions about the future. We help clients examine how changes in conflict, technology and the strategic environment could alter the tasks they need to perform and the relevance of their current approach.

We use alternative futures to question present expectations and explore the implications for development priorities, partnerships and competence. The work identifies which choices remain useful across different conditions, where flexibility matters and which developments need continued attention. Foresight can also inform problem framing and challenge whether a proposed approach would remain relevant under different future conditions.

03

Problem Framing
& Capability Design

An initial requirement expresses a particular understanding of a military problem. It may leave assumptions about the mission, operating environment, actors or available means unexamined. We help teams investigate those assumptions and consider how different ways of understanding the situation open different possibilities for action.

Military Design Thinking and our TRACE framework support this work from problem framing to the development and critical examination of concepts. Frugal Defence Innovation brings a focus on mission adequacy: what is needed to fulfil the task, which complexity is justified and how available resources should shape development choices.

Outputs can include a substantiated problem frame, alternative concepts and questions or hypotheses for further investigation and experimentation. They provide a basis for subsequent planning and engineering. Our focus is the early conceptual work that gives development direction and clarifies what it needs to establish.

Strategy &
Organisational Design

An organisation considering a new defence domain needs to decide where to contribute, what to develop and which capabilities to build. An established organisation may need to reconsider its priorities or how it develops and introduces new approaches. We support these strategic choices through research, assessment of alternatives and the development of a clear direction for action.

We also design the organisational systems through which innovation is carried out: mandates, roles, decision rights, working practices and interfaces. This includes how innovation teams work with users, product or capability planners, programme responsibilities and external partners. We clarify who can act on emerging evidence, how priorities can change and who takes responsibility for further development and use.

05

Ecosystem Strategy
& Design

Developing a solution or entering a new defence domain can depend on capabilities beyond one organisation: operational knowledge, specialist technology, test environments, integration expertise or industrial capacity. The actors holding these capabilities have their own objectives, constraints and reasons to participate.

We help clients understand these interdependencies and define their own strategic position. Which contribution can they make? Whose complementary capabilities are needed? What would make those actors commit resources? From this, we develop partnership options and arrangements for roles, contributions and coordination, including the interfaces through which knowledge and results need to pass.

06

Competence & Learning Architecture

The competence needed to investigate a problem differs from that needed to lead a design project or commission one. We help organisations identify these requirements and design qualification pathways around the responsibilities people will take on.

Our work includes competence profiles, curricula, applied learning and assessment. We connect education with opportunities to apply it, feedback on real work and exchange between practitioners. In Military Design Thinking, this is reflected in the progression from Practitioner to Advanced and Lead, complemented by education for sponsors and decision-makers.