Design to network the nation’s defence and promote growth for UK plc.
A think project

Dstl.

Sector: Engineering & Design

Our brief: How can UK defence innovation be more open, collaborative and efficient?

What we did: Our project ‘Opening the Door’ used stakeholder research and strategy workshops to start preparing the MOD for open innovation. With our partners Aleph Insights, we diagnosed MOD barriers to open innovation and measured different aspects of the organisation’s readiness levels.

What happened: We co-created an open innovation blueprint that was accepted in full – see here for a video version. This helped the MOD respond positively to a Strategic Defence Review in a manner designed to network the nation’s defence, support UK Universities and STEM skills and promote UK growth via innovative SMEs and prime defence suppliers. The resulting organisation, the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), was founded in 2016 and has invested over £42m to date in 278 projects in both the defence and security sectors, ranging from ‘human-machine teaming’ and ‘deep learning’ to investigating electromagnetic imaging techniques for automated imagery analysis.