Industry Conferences More Valuable Than Ever.

• Author: Carlisle, Hawk
• Position: NDIA Perspective - Conference news

As the National Defense Industrial Association's president and CEO, I'm sometimes asked about the purpose and value of our conferences, meetings and events. Everything NDIA does is focused on warfighter support so we design our events to act as a catalyst for government, industry and academia collaboration to solve our nation's toughest defense challenges.

Webster's defines a catalyst as "an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action." Close to 150 times each year, NDIA events act as a catalyst for industry-government-academia interaction, providing legal and ethical forums for government and industry to effectively collaborate to solve America's toughest security challenges. From large conventions to smaller, more focused meetings and conferences, NDIA events convene experts in a cost-effective manner that spurs outcomes supporting the strength, resiliency and capacity of the entire defense industrial base and its workforce.

The Defense Department acknowledged the value and benefits of industry association events in the deputy secretary of defense's "Engaging with Industry" March memo.

"Our National Defense Strategy directs our intentional engagement with industry to harness and protect the National Security Innovation Base as well as modernize key capabilities," it stated.

Army leadership, embracing this strategy, created the new Futures Command to reimagine and reinvigorate Army acquisition. To rapidly access emerging, innovative technologies, the new command will need to leverage meetings and conferences to quickly survey a wide landscape of industry products and capabilities to determine the best options for tackling the Army's highest acquisition priorities. NDIA creates optimal conditions for successful problem solving in an ethical environment, overcoming many of the constraints and restraints inherent in the department's current acquisition processes.

In their article, "Failures of Imagination: The Military's Biggest Acquisition Challenge," Jarrett Lane and Michelle Johnson highlight the government's unhelpful tactic of "internally engineering solutions." By specifying a solution instead of telling industry the desired outcome, the Defense Department ends up with capabilities that are "unimaginative, poorly conceived, or simply obsolete." Lane and Johnson recommend DoD focus less on internally engineering solutions and more on understanding problems, minimizing unnecessary bureaucratic requirements, and opening the...