Photo By Sgt. Juan Carpanzano | U.S. Marines with 4th Marine Logistics Group discuss innovation as part of an...... read more read more
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AUSTIN, Texas – Marines with 4th Marine Logistics Group have developed an innovation strategy during a conference here that capitalizes on U.S. Marine Corps Reserve capabilities and human talent to better exploit emerging technologies.
“This document is designed to kick start and sustain our program for years to come, to give us something we can use to measure progress and revise from time to time as situations change, or if we get a change in strategic global guidance or Service-level priorities,” said Col. George W. Markert, 4th MLG chief of staff, who is also spearheading the project.
The Marines chose Austin as the conference location because its already an established congregation of industry partners from sister branches in the innovation community. Units like the Army’s 75th Innovation Command and the Air Force’s AFWERX program, a technology directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory, were all here discussing best practices and lessons learned.
“Being here, we can learn so much from all these pioneers in the innovation community,” said Lt. Col. Anthony J. Scotti, the innovation officer-in-charge for the 4th MLG Innovation Unit. “We can act as eyes and ears for the Marine Corps to pull the right technology, services and procedures and ensure the [4th] MLG innovation unit’s success and endurance.,”
The innovation strategy focuses on establishing an identity and culture of innovation for all levels of the unit. The goal is to empower the junior Marine to have a greater impact for his unit and the Marine Corps than ever before. Marines can achieve this through an open culture that allows them to express and implement what they learn in their civilian careers within the unit.
“The identity of innovation we are establishing here at 4th MLG really revolves around a couple of things,” said Markert. “The first one being a culture of innovation, where people understand that is important and is necessary for warfighting success but then also it's a way for people with unique talents to get a little bit more visibility and use them for a common goal that the service deems important in terms of our ability to outpace and outmaneuver our adversaries. We see folks at a lower level being very integral to the Service-wide approach to future war.”
4th MLG is establishing this identity through improving many of their training sites nationwide to focus on providing Marines with the facilities and resources necessary for the innovation program. This will affect not only at 4th MLG, but the Marine Corps as a whole.
“How do you empower a Marine? You show them that you believe in their word, you show them the value that they bring to the fight, and genuinely take interest in what they're doing and provide the resources necessary to bring their ideas to fruition,” said Scotti. “If we want to retain the right Marines and talk about talent management, we need to give them purpose. Empower Marines to take all those skills and ideas that they take from their civilian jobs and bring them into the Marines Corps. We need to leverage capabilities, and to do so we must establish this identity [of innovation] and provide the facilities to expand on it.”
The team established a set of requirements through a wide array of viewpoints. Present were Marines from medical, infantry, combat logistics, and engineer support battalions. Also present were Marines who are already pushing the envelope in the innovation community, both inside and out of the Marine Corps. This allowed Col. Markert to have input from all walks of the Marine Corps Reserve in the creation of the innovation strategy.
“The process I employed was to ensure that everybody in the group understood why we were doing what we're doing, and I also wanted to implement some crowdsourcing,” said Markert. “Wisdom of the crowd. I wanted to get some ideas down that help us frame out what we were looking to write and also generate understanding across the group because they're now representatives of the innovation strategy and can help spread the word. It's amazing what emerged from the people in that room. Everybody has their own approach to innovation and experimentation or fighting. And in the end, everybody brings that all together. Working together you're going to have the best possible solution that you can come up with.”
| Date Taken: | 03.12.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 03.23.2023 09:52 |
| Story ID: | 440892 |
| Location: | AUSTIN, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 108 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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