Accelerating the Australian Army's Contest of Ideas

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nicholson, Joanne

Contributor:

Black, Marigold

Yeung, Jade

Language:

English

Place of Publication:

Santa Monica, Calif. RAND Corporation 2021

Summary:

The Australian Army prides itself on its pursuit of an intellectual edge. In his 2020 Accelerated Warfare Statement, the Chief of Army stressed the importance of an ongoing "contest of ideas" to ensure that the Army does not rest on its laurels and keeps pace with rapidly changing events and technology. Accompanying this is a call to make how this contest occurs more transparent and accessible to all those within the Army, taking advantage of the different media through which ideas can be presented. In this report, works published between 2014 and 2020 by the AARC in a range of publications, including the Australian Army Journal (AAJ), Land Power Forum (LPF) blog, and Army Research Scheme (ARS) reports, were analysed using a combination of methods, including numerical, categorical, and thematic analysis, and RAND-Lex, a text analytics suite. The report's findings highlight that each of the Army's publication modes has distinctive characteristics that makes it more suited to particular topics (e.g., futured-focused or retrospective), and that each publishes ideas at different levels of maturity. Recognising the strengths of each publication mode is important for understanding how to progress ideas through the innovation flow process. Strategic management of the AARC's publication portfolio should therefore include a review of the role of the 2017 Army Strategic Futures Agenda (ASFA) framework and the Army's areas of interest. A revised framework could enable the more effective identification of research gaps and could also be used to measure impact.