SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command
James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how would Geurts’s experience running an innovative procurement effort for U.S. Special Forces units enable him to change a much larger—and much more rigid—organization like the U.S. Navy? In one of the most secretive parts of the U.S. military, Geurts founded an open platform called SOFWERX to speed the rate of ideas to Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and the like. His team even sourced the idea for a hoverboard from a YouTube video. But how should things like SOFWERX and protypes like the EZ-Fly find a place within the Navy writ large?
Keywords: James Geurts; innovation; public entrepreneurship; open innovation; crowdsourcing; contests; prototyping; SOFWERX; Special Operations; SOCOM; govtech; procurement; FAR; EZ-Fly; Navy; Department of Defense; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Acquisition; Public Administration Industry; United States;
Citation:
Leonard, Herman, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik, and Kerry Herman. "SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command." Harvard Business School Case 819-004, July 2018. (Revised December 2018.) View Details