Navy Unveils Innovation Adoption Kit to Fast-Track Commercial Tech

The Department of the Navy’s Innovation Adoption Kit (IAK) positions the department’s evolution to focus on evaluation, implementation and scaling cutting-edge commercial technologies across the enterprise.

“May we all take the opportunity that this era and moment present to be the best partners with private sector we’ve ever been to deliver faster and better for our warriors,” innovation kit author and DON CTO Justin Fanelli said on LinkedIn.

Introduced in an October memo, the IAK serves as a “systematic framework for technology integration,” providing commanders and program managers with the practical tools necessary to bridge the perennial gap between rapidly emerging innovations and mission-ready naval capabilities. The document serves as a tactical manual for overcoming the bureaucratic hurdles that frequently stall military modernization, often referred to as the “Valley of Death.”

“Information superiority requires rapid innovation and iteration in a coordinated, enterprise-wide effort transcending traditional silos,” the document reads. “Iteration is the catalyst behind rapid innovation that delivers high-impact solutions to our warfighters.”

The kit aims to provide a unified methodology to overcome recurring bureaucratic barriers, such as siloed decision-making, rigid acquisition pathways and limited mechanisms for scaling successful pilot programs, supporting War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent call for quicker innovation to support the warfighter.

“We must transform the way department works and what it works on,” Hegseth said earlier this month. “We must build a department where each of the dedicated people here, especially the true entrepreneurs and innovators from our industrial base, can apply their immense talents to defend America where they have the resources, access, information and freedom to perform.”

‘Outcomes Over Obstacles’

The kit is built on a philosophy termed “outcomes over obstacles,” which prioritizes speed and warfighter needs over traditional, rigid processes. The document argues that while the War Department has historically prioritized “sustainment and gradual evolution,” today’s mission demands “faster, more flexible adoption” of tech.

“Government stakeholders across the DOW face recurring barriers: siloed decision-making, waterfall budgeting, rigid acquisition pathways and limited mechanisms for piloting or scaling promising solutions,” the document reads. “The [IAK] exists to help government stakeholders — program managers, requirement owners, contracting officers and technical leads — bridge that gap.”

A New Framework for Technology Lifecycle

Central to the kit is the introduction of investment horizons, a framework to visualize and manage the lifecycle of technologies. This model categorizes investments into four distinct stages:

• Horizon 3 (Evaluating): Focused on tech scouting and pilot programs using “other people’s money and work.”
• Horizon 2 (Emerging): For pilots that are scaling into next-generation products.
• Horizon 1 (Scaled Production): Technologies that are fully deployed and designated as Enterprise Services.
• Horizon 0 (Retiring): The critical phase of decommissioning obsolete systems to free up resources.

This framework is paired with structured divestments, as the kit calls for DON to “cattle drive the obsolete.” This includes the divestment of unneeded and unproductive IT systems and applications to eliminate redundant or obsolete applications, ensuring money is redirected toward modernization.

“To achieve widespread adoption and deliver a cutting-edge marketplace of scalable, reusable resources, we must prioritize needs and synchronize efforts to remove irrelevant technologies,” the document reads.

Deputy CTO Michael Frank told GovCIO Media & Research that the kit outlines ways that the Navy can move faster while still maintaining compliance with existing acquisition and budgeting constraints.

“Leveraging the structured piloting approach with outcome driven metrics will enable PMs to more effectively build a pipeline of technology that will spur competition and drive efficiency across the portfolio,” Frank said in an interview. “Additionally, the existing acquisition and budgeting constraints are being modified with the changes in the warfighting acquisition system. As a result, there will be additional opportunity to lean into the top 10 behaviors and drive meaningful change.”

Innovation Kit Factor in Navy Recognition

The Department of the Navy won the 2025 Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award for North America for its modernization push – of which the kit is a major part. Fanelli told GovCIO Media & Research that the award is the first time a government agency won the award, beating out private industry giant Verizon.

“The Department of Navy achieved strategic alignment by shifting from compliance-driven IT to mission-focused outcomes, anchoring every initiative to top-level capability needs instead of legacy requirements,” Forrester wrote in its announcement. “Its IAK and ‘Accelerating Change Design Concept’ reduced delivery cycles from months to weeks, while its generative AI assistant, DON GPT, scaled across departments and increased productivity.”

By anchoring initiatives to the Top Level Requirements outlined in the IAK, the Navy successfully deployed Flank Speed, the first secure cloud environment in the DOW to achieve full zero trust compliance. Additionally, the service’s focus on outcomes over obstacles enabled the rapid scaling of DON GPT, a generative AI assistant that has delivered productivity gains of 20 –30% across the workforce.

Accelerating Delivery with Modern Standards

The kit addresses the technical side of adoption through modern service delivery requirements, including scaling shared services.

“The Department of the Navy is implementing shared information technology services as a fundamental shift in how the organization designs, consumes and delivers services to support mission objectives and the DON Information Superiority Vision,” the document reads.

The DON is mandating that digital services be “composable by default,” cloud-native and zero trust compliant, and the IAK calls for top-level requirements to bypass the years-long delays associated with traditional requirements writing.

“The release of the IAK comes amidst significant changes to the DOW and DON acquisition landscape, including changes to the authorities and processes that will alleviate many of those tradition barriers,” Frank said. “However, by itself, the IAK can still help PMs and COs by providing common frameworks and methodologies to scout, assess, pilot, transition and divest capabilities. It also includes a set of outcome driven metrics that can be used to measure performance on a standard scale.”

Measuring Success Through Mission Outcomes

Moving away from purely technical metrics, the DON is implementing world-class alignment metrics that focus on tangible mission outcomes, such as “user time lost,” “operational resiliency” and “customer satisfaction,” rather than simple system uptime. This shift aims to replace risk aversion with risk acceptance, granting teams the “freedom to iterate for the good of the warfighter.”

The kit helos workforce readiness and encourages a mindset shift among naval personnel to adopt more agile, flexible approaches to technology integration, Frank told GovCIO Media & Research.

“The biggest challenge has been, and always will be, culture. There are many frameworks in the kit that will help PMs but the most important is the top 10 behaviors,” Frank said. “Spreading these behaviors across the DON acquisition community will be critical to driving a true mindset shift.”

Within the “obstacles over outcomes” framework, DON calls for learning through a different relationship to risk and failure. Evolution requires “bias toward speed,” the document reads, including trying, missing the mark and learning from the experience.

“Failure is a tool, not a permanent mark. Success is not the only criteria for recognition. All attempts to achieve information advantage are celebrated when focused on outcomes,” the document says.