Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation

by Terry C. Pierce

Occasionally, during times of peace, military forces achieve major warfighting innovations. Terry Pierce terms these developments 'disruptive innovations' and shows how senior leaders have often disguised them in order to ensure their innovations survived.

He shows how more common innovations however, have been those of integrating new technologies to help perform existing missions better and not change them radically. The author calls these 'sustaining innovations'. The recent innovation history suggests two interesting questions. First, how can senior military leaders achieve a disruptive innovation when they are heavily engaged around the world and they are managing sustaining innovations? Second, what have been the external sources of disruptive (and sustaining) innovations?

This book is essential reading for professionals and students interested in national security, military history and strategic issues.

284 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2000

About the author

Terry C. Pierce is a Captain, USN, retired. He commanded the USS Whidbey Island LSD-41 and was Chief of Staff, Amphibious Force 7th Fleet. He was the speechwriter for Admiral Mike Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations. He retired as the Director of the Center of Innovation at the United States Air Force Academy. He holds doctorate and master's degrees from Harvard. He is the author of Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation (Frank Cass, 2004). He is the author of Without Warning: The Saga of Gettysburg, A Reluctant Union Hero, and the Men He Inspired (Heart Ally Books, June 2020).