Pamela H. Krause, National Imagery and Mapping Agency
September 2001
Abstract
Proteus is an advanced concepts futures research effort that seeks to pull out innovation drivers and new technology concepts by looking broadly and deeply across plausible alternative futures and characterizing uncertainty in the future national security problem space. The analytical techniques underlying the research have come from two sources. The scenario-based planning technique utilized was based on commercial best practices designed to manage uncertainty as developed by The Futures Group (now part of Deloitte Consulting, LP). The technology planning technique is based on the former Futures Group's original work for the federal government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Adhering to the principle of future “plausibility” versus “probability,” four fundamental precepts have guided the research: avoid uncritical extrapolation from today, avoid reductionism, challenge conventional thinking and do not necessarily drive for an early consensus. Rigor in applying the precepts helps the organization break old thinking patterns and frees it to discover the dynamic forces for change emerging from alternative world situations. With this new understanding, the organization can evaluate alternative advanced research and development (AR&D) strategies and perform tradeoff analyses of decision-making processes. The research has evolved in two parts: (1) An examination of the future national security problem space using scenario-based planning and (2) The development of several approaches to the solution space (what should an organization do about the problems uncovered). Framing a challenging and perhaps nontraditional problem space to explore possible outcomes, then engaging in planning workshops set in those future operating environments has resulted in some cases, startling possibilities for a unique organization to pursue. Possibilities arise from the study of six alternative worlds and they appear to cross multiple venues: physical, virtual, biological and even temporal. Thinking in new ways about the future-operating environment along with the understanding of emerging future technologies helps research planners in a historically advanced systems engineering organization develop a solid basis for AR&D investments.
Article
Proteus, the name derived from a Greek mythological character, emanates an aura conveying prescience and change. The character is said to have been able to see into the future and change shape and form at will. The Proteus Project is a study in change dynamics and the associated implications to a unique organization, the United States National Reconnaissance Office, whose legacy has embraced technological breakthroughs and whose hallmark is innovation itself. In late 1998, a small government-led research team with relatively minimal resources undertook a project to build a problem identification and definition activity that could orient research toward a long-term view beyond the classic acquisition cycle into technological capability planning.
The purpose of the project was to initially experiment with a commercial pedigree scenario-based planning methodology to work from problem space characterization to solution space concept development by linking future customer pull to technology investment planning. The premise to broaden the strategic outlook beyond current acquisition cycles for advanced research and development (AR&D) investment in a high-tech, space-based organization necessitated a study timeframe beyond classic government budgetary cycles, yet synchronized with the complex engineering associated with aerospace engineering. An added underlying premise behind the research was based on altering the technology planning focus to unsolved problems and pushing the envelope for innovative thinking at the earliest point of the planning cycle, the strategy development phase.
Scenario-based planning allowed a departure from the comfortable paradigms of linear extrapolation, which are dominant in many forecasting methodologies and strategic planning practices. It also allowed the planning focus to change from technology, specifically the next new thing, to situations where technology might need to be developed or conceived differently to solve unfamiliar problems. The approach fit the investigative nature of the project, which centered on developing expanded awareness and fundamental understanding of key enduring and emerging national security problems and only then, exploring ways to align AR&D investment decision-making to address the problem areas. The approach was an unorthodox look into future national security problems spanning a range of possible, not probable future world situations in a notional timeframe twenty years ahead. None of the research methods applied was intended to be predictive methods. Although recent history is replete with multiple studies, commissioned or undertaken as reorganization efforts in national security affairs following shifts from Cold War strategies, this technique afforded an unusually rigorous intellectual discipline, designed to turn anxiety about the unknown into a real uncertainty management tool suite. The fundamental challenge would be the application of the discipline and the problem-based investigation in an advanced research context.
The techniques employed included an intellectually intense “situation and issue” research phase, involving both the stewardship of key leaders, mission partners, customers and a core analytic team. The core analytic team performed expansive research, not only in national security problems, but also cultural, scientific and technological areas outside traditional fields of study in the space technology realm. The team's members were drawn from the organization itself, its customers and mission partners, organizations well known in the defense and intelligence arena. Following the initial period of intense research, additional project phases included:
· Definition and detailed development of a range of “possible but not probable” operating environments twenty years hence
· Examination and characterization of enduring and emerging national security problems
· Identification of observables associated with the problems
· Nomination and proposal of notional systems or technology groupings that should be developed
· Stress-testing research strategies in multiple world situations
· Development and presentation of “perceptual models” of research areas via metaphoric insights and strategies to convey how the organization might prepare and respond to the “robust” future problem space
The rigor of the process was built from a proprietary application of scenario-based planning methodology, architected from case studies and applied experience primarily in the corporate world [1]. It was fused with an ambitious compilation and analysis of future national security issues [2]. The project involved participation of government, industry and academic expertise. The emphasis in involving “outsiders” as well as “insiders” in national security affairs worked to yield multiple perspectives of the future problem space undocumented in government “official papers.” These perspectives were compiled and synthesized into macrolevel, intelligence community–wide insights impacting AR&D considerations. In November 2000, the insights were published in book form as “Proteus Insights from 2020” [3]. Further research into the specific organizational implications of the insights has been done to augment the project's objective exploration from problem to solution space.
There have been some unexpected benefits in taking this problem-characterization approach within a large and unique organization. The Proteus Project Team itself learned from the methodology that:
· Business practices with a successful pedigree (e.g., scenario-based planning) can augment traditional strategic planning activities and add considerable breadth and depth to AR&D planning
· Participants in the project can develop a keener sense of awareness of trends and issues that correspond to the value of pursuing certain technologies
· Long-standing outside negative perceptions of the organization can be altered positively by the concerted outreach to and involvement of external expertise
· New perceptions into the future problem space as well as new problems can be formulated from the diversity of the perspectives assembled
· Scenario-based planning is a nontrivial exercise, and requires extensive topical research, significant time and personal dedication to progress through the study
· Common-based tools of communication (e.g., Microsoft Office PowerPoint) are generally inadequate to convey research results usefully to nonparticipants inside and outside the organization
· A problem-to-solution finding track with a continual look into the future should be an essential ingredient for innovative planning in AR&D, refreshing even a vibrant organization
The outcome of the experiment includes an intellectual framework that can be utilized to support program and budgetary planning activities, and possibly inspire new advanced research concept development. Key to the framework is the articulation of mission drivers, developed early in the project by members of the organization, its mission partners and customers. For the National Reconnaissance Office, these numbered well over two hundred. The drivers are beyond the organization’s control, however, they are enduring factors that have some type of impact on the organization. These mission drivers are synthesized into a future planning space, which in the Proteus case frame both global and U.S.-centric issues. Although it was not in the original plan, in practice the Proteus Project Team discovered that elements of this planning space framework are highly extensible and can be shared with customers and mission partners to explore and further tailor similar planning activities. A prevailing vision of the Proteus Project, to discover and experiment with ideas that might form a “framework for strategic innovation” can be analyzed as a key factor in enabling the general-purpose adaptability aspect of the work to other organizations or problem studies.
Noteworthy about this particular project is the type of team that took on this experiment. A “problem-finding” team was assembled, originally looking at building a compendium of future trends, various forecasts, and strategic planning documentation available throughout the national security community. The research proved in practice to be a valuable problem-understanding tool for the scenario-based planning effort in general. Proteus was conceived from a starting point well grounded in exhaustive pre-research of technological challenges and global trends [2]. From this vantage point, the team developed the key research questions:
· Could scenario-based planning reveal areas of the future the organization's strategists and technologists are not even considering? (What is it that we do not know we don't know?)
· If we find new problems, can concepts be formulated and can technologies be developed today to address these possible future problems?
· Can a planning process itself maximize the potential for innovation or even drive innovation? Is the vision of a framework for strategic innovation a feasible concept?
From the author's and project director's viewpoint, the effort has been a significant challenge where successful results were achieved. Much interest in the intellectual framework and the research approach has been generated. Much of the power in the process can be analyzed in a comparative sense as a set or collection of “prescriptive models,” analytical models that include a number of alternative paths for outcomes developed by interactions, yielding decisions that cause alternative behavioral patterns [4]. It cannot be ignored that a significant element in the foundational process is its ability to allow the commingling of “mental models” via the participant workshop interaction. The interaction fosters considerable creative thinking as the mental models are healthily challenged or reinforced by experience and judgment of the participants [5]. The scenario-based planning process emphasizes construction of mental models outside the participants' familiar surroundings and thus allows for new and original thinking to emerge.
Further analyzing the strengths of the project that served the organization well in carrying out the study, it would be errant not to include an assessment of the “teaming” aspects that contributed heavily to sometimes, “unexpected” successful results. One contributing factor was the “innovative spirit” that developed during project formulation that can also be traced directly to the interest and involvement of key leaders within the organization very early in the effort. An energetic leader with the desire to expand the sub-organization's foundation knowledge of difficult, technically insurmountable problems that might merit AR&D planted the seed idea of the project. The team leader hailed from outside the organization, being chosen from an experimental personnel program to expand national security workforce experience. These factors contributed to an objective outlook in setting up the project components and team composition.
The whole aspect of “newness” itself was a real motivator to the project and a cohesive element of the team. The team was new and the sub-organization was barely one year old when the project was initiated. None of the team members had worked with each other on an extended basis before. The team stepped though many unknowns in the course of the project, a factor that strengthened team performance. In an unusual move, a commercial firm from outside the National Reconnaissance Office's traditional business base competed for the methodology. The team was initially highly skeptical of successfully applying a commercial methodology and tackling such a daunting set of research questions. Members from the team did a series of short interviews with some of the project sponsors during the start-up period. These organizational leadership sponsors set the team on a course of thinking-in-the-large immediately. A scientist challenged them to go even farther into the future than originally planned and secure the best minds in the country to take part. The team was encouraged to treat the small project with the same seriousness as the building of a key national asset. They were also told to be as controversial as possible. All of those initial leadership interviews were invaluable spurs to the team’s inspiration. In addition the team was given leeway to experiment without having to deal with excessive bureaucratic constraints.
The methodology application included a “hands-on” scenario-based planning exercise. Each member was actively engaged in all phases of the “planning tool” development, including the specification of mission drivers and the definition of the future planning space. They were the ones who developed the highly tailored future “end-states” and contributed to narrative future histories. Six alternative futures were fully developed and studied using a series of probing questions to find national security problems and the corresponding AR&D strategies. The team interacted in workshops with members of the intelligence community and invitees from outside the community and analyzed workshop strategic outcomes. Strategies were stress tested in all situations. Further synthesis was done that included a combination of qualitative and quantitative evaluations. The process yielded a definition of the future national security problem space and notional systems needed in the technology solution space requiring AR&D at its best. The interim documentation of the insight definitions of the future environment was presented in metaphors to prevent highly trained systems engineers to default to reductionism in developing the next new thing.
In addition to the insights published in book form, a future organizational strategy was developed, a concept for dynamic gaming, and an analysis framework for critical technologies was conceptualized. The framework for innovation, once a vision, is now a real planning framework tailored for a large and unique organization. Interest in using the concepts developed as a result of this research project continues to grow as the participants in the endeavor take their learning experiences into their respective work areas. The research questions, the new energized team, and the rigorous discipline of the scenario-based planning process worked together to produce an innovative thinking framework extensible to other organizations' applications.
References
1. L. Fahey and R.M. Randall (Editors), Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios, Wiley,
2. National Reconnaissance Office, Problem Identification and Definition Forecast 2020(S), internal publication, Logicon TASC, October 2000.
3. P.H. Krause (Compiler), M. Loescher, C.W. Thomas and C. Schroeder, Proteus Insights from 2020, The Copernicus Institute Press, November 2000.
4. J.L. Casti, Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science, Wiley, New York, Chichester, Weinkeim, Brisbane, Singapore, Toronto, 1997, p. 18.
5. R. Foster and S. Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies that are Built to Last Underperform the Market — and How to Successfully Transform Them, Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc., 1540 Broadway, NY, New York, 10036, April 2001, p. 19.
Pamela H. Krause is currently a senior researcher in geospatial science at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in
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