Innovation doesn’t just happen, and it cannot be forced. It takes time, effort, and commitment to find a new path forward. Still, sometimes asking the right question can set us on that path. That is the goal of MITRE’s Open Innovation Challenge.
Every year, MITRE’s independent research and development program receives over 1000 research project ideas from across the organization and selects approximately 200 for funding. When Dr. Shelley Kirkpatrick received funding from the MITRE Innovation Program (MIP) in 2017 to research the principles of organizational agility, little did she know that three years later her work would be a big hit in Las Vegas.
Sponsors turn to us for our expertise and expect us to have the answers and to make recommendations. This role of guide can be liberating. As guides, we no longer need to have all the answers. Instead we ask provocative questions to our sponsors to elicit their own answers. (Feel free to start playing the song “Let it go” in your head.) This change in role may push both us and our sponsors out of our proverbial comfort zones. Let me tell you how this has worked in real life.
Awais Sheikh is the Capability Steward for Business Innovation here at MITRE. In this episode Awais helps us decipher a fundamental question for any organization on a mission to better the world. When you get past the hype, what is the real meaning of innovation? And perhaps more importantly, how can we get past the jargon so we can make a lasting, positive impact?
As part of their research into veteran mental health, MITRE Veterans Council members and the Design for Life MITRE Innovation Program research team hosted a design studio dedicated to hearing directly from veterans about their transition from active duty to civilian life.
Coming from a military background, Jay learned about computer programming at a young age and developed a passion for it that introduced him to exciting emerging technologies at Carnegie Mellon, in the Air Force, in the consulting world, and, finally, in his current work at MITRE.
Ali Zaidi is a MITRE data scientist tackling an interesting challenge for MITRE as part of his work for Generation AI Nexus. As the fields of machine learning and data science have grown, the need for machine learning education has become a necessity of many fields few would associate with computer science.
This article identifies veterans navigating the process of transitioning to civilian employment in an attempt to highlight the struggles and benefits of being a veteran in the civilian workforce.
When one imagines the next source of emerging technologies that could serve MITRE and our government partners, the music and film industries are hardly the first ones that come to mind. However, with the surge of innovation happening outside of government walls, new ideas and emerging technologies can come from anywhere.
Anyone with experience facing an important challenge or project understands that the job is easier when you have the right tools. The Innovation Toolkit (ITK) is a collection of methods and techniques curated by MITRE experts to help teams be more innovative.
Tammy Freeman is a Business Process Innovation consultant at MITRE. Her work focuses on bringing novel solutions to MITRE sponsors by helping them redefine how they understand Innovation.
What child can resist the challenge of building a tiny robot (or “bot”) using the head of a toothbrush, a button battery, and a pager motor?
The Emerging Technologies program is now a major undertaking for MITRE. It draws upon contributions from staff at all levels of the company, including many who were not mentors or student investigators.
Starbucks and Google are just two of the many organizations that have pursued active inclusion and diversity practices with expected business benefits. Evidence that fostering an inclusive workplace has value for an organization and its employees comes from research that highlights the positive and negative consequences of inclusion and diversity.
Once every few months, I find myself in a meeting where a problem has just been solved and now some sort of action is needed to put a solution in place. My initial excitement about making real progress is often dampened when a meeting participant offers the suggestion…
Chances are, you’ve interacted with an embedded system today. Did you use a thermostat? How about a car? Or maybe a mobile phone? Or a television, a game console, an elevator, a train, a pacemaker?…
Our world and workplace are increasingly being aided by artificial intelligence, from personal assistants like Alexa to robots working on assembly lines. But, in most cases, people’s needs must remain front and center if…
How might we redesign an organization to improve mission outcomes without assuming that reorganization is the right first choice? ….
When change management professionals step in to share their knowledge of how organizations can work better, they come with stories…
In her previous post, Technical Challenges in Data Science, Amanda Andrei discussed the need for technical vigilance and with experts Dr. Elizabeth Hohman, statistician and group leader within MITRE’s Department of Data Analytics, and Dr. Eric Bloedorn, senior principal artificial intelligence engineer. Tools and models, however carefully managed, tell, of course, only part of the story. Data scientists are people, and they and the tools they use reside within organizational cultures, which may require as much training as the data to hand.—Editor