Harnessing the Power of Solder-Driven Innovation with Bill Wilder, NCOIC, XVIII Airborne Corps Data Activities

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:18]:
All right, welcome. I'm Bonnie Evangelista from the CDAO Chief Digital and AI office, joined by Mr. Bill Wilder. Please introduce yourself.

Bill Wilder [00:00:26]:
Hi, I'm Bill Wilder. I'm the NCOIC of data activities at 18th airborne core what does that mean? So formally had a different name, but basically any technology that we're bringing into the core and the innovation portfolio, we run the integration and the contracting for it. And we also have our core's cloud architect as an integral part of our formation. And so what she's doing is designing the Il two through six infrastructure for the Dragon Cloud and implementing it okay.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:56]:
For our maybe less savvy, military oriented people out there. What is the 18th Airborne Corps? And I was one of those people, don't get me wrong, only because I know people like you have to explain it to me.

Bill Wilder [00:01:10]:
Yeah. So the 18th Airborne Corps is America's contingency force in terms of who we're aligned to in terms of a COCOM. We're really aligned to all the COCOMs. Whenever a contingency operation flies up or pops up, say, like HKIA, like stuff like that, we're the ones who get the call and the headquarters, that the headquarters and joint task force that goes out the door to handle that situation.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:01:32]:
Okay, so you mentioned innovation. I'll call it innovation operations. Tell us more about that. What are you doing at the core level?

Bill Wilder [00:01:41]:
So, at the core level, it's more of a I would describe it as the awareness of what we empower the divisions to do most the lion's share of the technical work because they're the owners of the soldiers. And what's really important is that that ground up innovation and the benefit going to the soldiers, really important. So we help the divisions manage their innovation programs, which are partnered with Devcom ARL in terms of the innovation centers at three out of the four division home bases and support that through an effort with Ota, with Y'all to get after the core commander's priorities at the core level, one of Cloud being one of them and other different initiatives.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:02:29]:
So what kind of construct are you trying to design with what you just talked about?

Bill Wilder [00:02:34]:
Right.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:02:35]:
So you've got some levers to pull that's me paraphrasing and a simple way of understanding or trying to understand what you're talking about. I think you're trying to design some kind of pipeline, and I want to try and illuminate that a little bit more.

Bill Wilder [00:02:49]:
Yes. So the pipeline, really the vision is that we connect the end user, the actual end user, customer of a product or service in the army all the way to the money and authorities that pay for that product or service or capability to go into that end user's hands. And that's what our innovation pipeline is designed to do, is to suck up soldier like to curate soldier ideas, present them through a competition like the Martin Innovation Challenge or the drop zone that the 82nd does or Dragons layer that Core does and that markets and highlights that soldier idea. And then the intent is to connect them with either a PM or program executive office to take that soldier's idea as feedback and have it inform requirements of that capability.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:39]:
You mentioned the Soldier innovation events or initiatives. You have the 82nd, what was that called?

Bill Wilder [00:03:46]:
The drop Innovation drop zone is the 80 seconds. And third, IDs is just the Martin Innovation challenge.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:52]:
How long have those types of events been going on? Are they new?

Bill Wilder [00:03:56]:
So the division one is only about the past year. So it started with Dragonslayer about, I want to say three ish years ago. And so what eventually happened is around the time of like a year or two ago, we started looking at at the division level. I was at three ID at the time. It's like, okay, what would it look like if we did this at a division level with our devcom and industry and academic partners that we normally work through?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:28]:
Yeah, this whole bottoms up. Yeah, bottoms up innovation, how do you think it's working right now?

Bill Wilder [00:04:39]:
So I think it works and fits and starts. Honestly, the number one issue that we're trying to get after is in the sense of business, how I view it, at least the customer in the DoD, a lot of times a vendor doesn't consider the soldier to be that customer. That contracting officer is the customer who's committing the government, for what amount of money, over what period of performance is the customer. And that's kind of the narrative we're trying to change. Like, the soldier that uses the capability at the end of the day is that end user customer, and that's whose opinion matters. Honestly, not saying a Ko's opinion doesn't matter, it always does. But in terms of what the content of that service or capability actually is, that's where the soldier's input is absolutely vital. And that's what we're trying to keep on the forefront of everything we do.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:25]:
You were just reminding me, speaking of Dragonslayer, I heard a thing, maybe I won't call it a rumor, but maybe secondhand, that Dragons layer is actually for anyone, not just soldiers. Can you clarify or correct me if I'm wrong on that?

Bill Wilder [00:05:40]:
Yeah. So anyone in the DoD can submit to Dragonslayer?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:45]:
Yeah.

Bill Wilder [00:05:45]:
So any of the joint partners, DoD civilians, anyone with an idea, anyone with an idea can submit to it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:53]:
How do they do that? How do they find out about it?

Bill Wilder [00:05:55]:
So the iteration we're doing right now for Dragons Layer ten is we're using a platform called Vision that we're working with JSOC and Yusasok to do a pilot of and we're going to use that as kind of the intake and assessment in terms of engagement and interest for each potential project. And where in previous years we've done a manual rack and stack based off like we used the Nsin database previously open Hive. But we made the shift to this because we were still having to do a little bit of manual scoring and aggregation to get the one to end list, if you will, of the competitors. Put in front of General Donahue or General Carilla in order to or say like Dragons layer nine. Put in front of General Fenton, general Donahue to vote on. So what we're trying to get ahead of with the Vision Pilot is find a way to make that a lot easier and make tracking the projects a lot easier as well on the back end.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:54]:
So I'm Bonnie at CDAO, I have an idea I want to submit. How is this messaged across DoD? Is that one of the areas? Because I've never heard of it until I met people like, yeah, what's going on there?

Bill Wilder [00:07:11]:
So what's going on? It's a little bit of a marketing challenge, I'd say it's a little bit know because a lot of it stays internal to the core and our Pao does a great job in the quarter upcoming to it of advertising it and that's when that link typically goes out to units outside the core. So we've done a little bit of distribution. We have an innovation newsletter that our command posts about, I think once a year usually, and it will have that link that goes in there. And I think for this iteration we put the old repository link in there just as good measure because we're stand as pilot up. But in the months coming up to the next Dragons layer, that's when we'll start marketing that link like, hey, yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:07:59]:
So I'm going to grab the link now through this tool, this digital tool or platform. I'm going to submit my idea. Then what happens?

Bill Wilder [00:08:09]:
So then what happens is it'll go into a selection process. It'll be in there for partners who are also on that platform to look at it, engage with it and everything like that. And what we're going to do is use the platform's analytics to assess what the most engaged with projects are, what the projects that have garnered the most interest are, and especially projects where someone in the ecosystem has seen them and said, like, hey, I want to partner on this. And that all adds up to the viability of that project. And then that will select what goes into the panel.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:44]:
And am I submitting a white paper or a video?

Bill Wilder [00:08:50]:
It could be anything. It could be a white paper, it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:52]:
Could be a video voice track, right? I don't know, an audio clip of me just talking.

Bill Wilder [00:08:55]:
I don't know about audio clips. I'll have to ask Sean Cooper about that because he's been handling, like getting the pilot on board.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:02]:
Okay.

Bill Wilder [00:09:03]:
And I've been mostly supporting him.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:05]:
Okay. How many submissions have you received in the past?

Bill Wilder [00:09:09]:
In the past, obviously, I'm like digging.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:14]:
You could swag it. Yeah. Just sweat.

Bill Wilder [00:09:16]:
I'm going to swag like for one of them. We well over 100.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:19]:
Okay. Yeah. That's a lot because someone has to read and assess all of those.

Bill Wilder [00:09:24]:
Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:25]:
And then I'm assuming there's some sort of down select. Not trying to be super formal with that term, but basically there's a smaller, more manageable number that does a presentation to you mentioned General Donahue and General that is that usually who it is, is it?

Bill Wilder [00:09:45]:
More than usually. So the panel usually consists of dragon six, dragon nine. Sorry, I almost demoted. So general Donahue and Star major Holland. And then what we'll also have as key industry and academic partners and other partners from the DoD will also sit on that panel as.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:10:10]:
Is it going back to where we started? Right. Our pipeline. An idea is determined to have some kind of interest or legitimacy in terms of like, this is worthy of doing something right. And so then there are resources available to either connect them to the right people you were talking about Peos earlier and possibly PMS.

Bill Wilder [00:10:35]:
That's the intent. Yeah. So in terms of the resources to get them there, it's kind of a trick question because one of the things I've cleared up with my boss in terms of how I understand his intent, a lot of the intent behind this is we're trying to influence the resources and authority to use money for this. Moved as close to the end user as possible, the end user customer as possible. That's what's going to enable rapid change in technology. At the edge is essentially much like the Air I know one of the goals long term is to have the same kind of unit innovation funds that the Air Force executes. And that would be really great because then at the squadron battalion, like the squadron battalion level, then that's a soldier going to his battalion to an Five commander and being able to execute funds to enhance that prototype out. And that's the long term goal.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:11:36]:
Yeah. What I like about this construct, I think you're iterating on it for sure. But what I like about it is you don't know the answers, especially the funding questions, but you're still taking action to figure out what right looks like.

Bill Wilder [00:11:56]:
For you and kind of the approach that we've kind of taken to it. A lot of the times that I've seen I forget who it was yesterday someone blew my mind with the redesignation of MVP as an acronym. So there's Minimum Viable Products, then there's Minimum Valuable Products is how I kind of look at it now. Because those actions that we take yeah. We don't know what the right answer is. We're iterating, but what we can do is where we can do that pause and deliberate and say, okay, what value is this action or is pursuing this project going to bring? And if it's going to bring value and capability of the warfighter, then, hey, just go work on it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:38]:
Go do it. I think maybe more conventionally that's return on investment. Okay, can we talk about innovation outpost?

Bill Wilder [00:12:48]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:49]:
How does that fit into this?

Bill Wilder [00:12:50]:
So innovation, outpost. We're building it to serve as kind of the hub for Fort Liberty, for, say, if we were to do conventions, to hold classes for us and partners, to bring together the digital skill sets and have a place to do that work that's not inside the Dragon Jock or inside the headquarters. Someplace where people can go and meet and do this work. And this is something that I tell my people in terms of the innovation officers in the Corps is. The thing about being in the operational army or an operational unit is you always have to respect the fact that it's operational. And the reason why a lot of people have issues getting buy in from their commanders is they want to take the thing and they want to break it right now and do the new thing. But the approach that you got to take is you have to use your empathy and consider that commander's risked a mission. If you're doing something operationally new that's untested and unfounded, you might fail at a mission, you might make your force less ready. So the part of appealing to commanders in the operational force is you've got to show that transition of that technology or capability into how that unit currently operates and fights. Because what you can't do is say, we respond to an IRF right now. I can't throw a bunch of new untested uniterated on technology and workflows into my jock and expect that to be supported, because what my commander is going to see from that is, okay, we didn't figure out what we're doing ahead of time. We just degraded our own capability just by trying to do something new for the sake of doing something new. So that's why that transition period and explaining and drawing that out for a commander and the operational force is absolutely vital, and people get a lot of friction sometimes when they don't do that. You've got two customers like your soldiers, and your staff are customers. Your commander is a customer too. You have to show your commander how you're going to, over time, enhance his capability to conduct warfighting operations and not stop operations in their tracks just to integrate something new. The select phased integration is critical and explain that out.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:15:17]:
Yeah, the legacy a plain example. When I interact with people and we're talking about this topic, whether you talk software, hardware, or something even more plain, like for army, it's tanks, right? You're not just going to get rid of your tank fleet over. So there has to be a legacy. You have to address the legacy as much as you can't go do modernization without bringing in some kind of solution for legacy as well.

Bill Wilder [00:15:49]:
Well, a good way to bridge it is looking at what redundancies you need. This is something I've covered with working with the optionally manned fighting vehicle, next gen fighting vehicle stuff as a master gunner. And part of what I've had to explain to some of the cross functional team members involved in designing those vehicles is, okay, yeah, we're going to throw all this capability in on this platform. However, what happens when that capability breaks? Same thing as like I said, for the innovation outpost. And I know we just segued, but that's the reason why we've got the innovation outpost and the jock is that's a place to do the testing, do the work, figure out the workflows, do that collaboration without interfering with current operations.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:16:35]:
I would say this is not the first time I've heard of the construct you're trying to build. I think it's the first time I've heard it being built at your level. However, so the key to me is bridging the gap with your acquisition, community and system as well. So what can we do to help you or what would you like to see happen in terms of closing that gap as much as possible?

Bill Wilder [00:17:03]:
So closing that gap, I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, didn't we? Pretty much. It's a training, it's a culture change and there's a lot of training that has to be involved in it. So a vignette of what happens is whenever someone approaches us to want to do something new, the first thing I ask them is ask them is, okay, if we're going to do something new and there's going to be contracting involved, who's going to be your co r?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:17:29]:
There you go.

Bill Wilder [00:17:30]:
And a lot of them, the easy answer out of most people's mouths is like, oh yeah, well, the mic has the it's like, okay, well, the mic also has an existing mission know, which you've got to respect. Anybody can be a cor. So getting that knowledge, that contracting knowledge out there and getting it so people can speak the language so that no one's inadvertently committing the government in a way that no one wants to, or talking about money in a way that's illegal is pretty critical. And for that, really closing that, it's just collaborating on education is the only thing I could ask for.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:08]:
Okay, so let's final note then. What else can my community learn from the 18th Airborne Corps? Whether it's innovation we talked about innovation pipeline, innovation outpost. What else can you leave us with that we can take away and maybe do better for the collective right? Because we're all in this together?

Bill Wilder [00:18:34]:
Well, I think it's that if you're working with the right partners and you're taking the right advice, nothing's out of the realm of the possible. There's a lot of stuff that the core has done over I don't even know how many years that is. Some people say it's groundbreaking, some people say it's risky. But what matters is that it works and it provides results, and it makes us and our people more lethal and capable to get the mission accomplished and be able to change. Not the drop of a hat, but quicker than nations. So it's an organization I'm proud to say I've spent 90% of my career in as a soldier, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:19:18]:
Right on. Thank you so much.

Bill Wilder [00:19:21]:
No problem.