Exploring The Innovation Environment Within The Systems Engineering Context Of A Defense Organization: A Preliminary Framework

Innovation may involve the introduction of ideas for designing or producing new products, or introducing improvements to products, processes, services or any other aspect of an organization to the market place. A major element for measuring organizational strength is its perception of innovation and the ability of the organization to build on and sustain such strength. While there is no shortage of research and study materials on innovation, there is, however, a shortage of thorough and realistic analysis of the intersection of innovation management, and measurement of innovation within the systems engineering context of defense organizations. In addition, while most research studies seem to adopt strictly quantitative innovation factors in determining innovation success and performance, they seem to have overlooked the qualitative side of it. An objective of this research study is to address the need for exploring the innovation environment within the systems engineering context of a defense organization. In addition, the research presents a new model for exploring innovation factors within the examined environment, using both quantitative and qualitative factors. The research uses a number of data collection instruments that include a survey construct to gather quantitative and qualitative data. The study identified significant factors that could be used to properly determine innovation within the systems engineering context of defense organizations using traditional statistics and data mining modeling. New indicators such as security and organizational leadership are discovered as important to define, monitor, and assess the innovation of the defense industry within the context of systems engineerin