Bridging IDF force-design complexities: Blueprint for bottom-up innovation – The emergence of transformational commanders and 5^th Gen CINOs

In the face of an intricate defense landscape, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confronts evolving challenges, necessitating transformative strategies. In the past decade, the IDF championed innovation through decentralized silos (“islands of innovation”), steered by 4^th generation Chief Innovation Officers (CINOs) with ‘liquid professionalism’. Since the establishment of the Combat Methods and Innovation (CMI) division, the IDF has formed an institutionalized innovation management system, managed by intraorganizational 5^th generation CINOs. This system allowed binding these islands into a cohesive framework (an archipelago) designed to rapidly respond to internal developments and external challenges, showcasing the IDF’s capacity to navigate the complexities of modern warfare with agility and foresight. The main contribution of this article is two-folded, first it advocates for the cultivation of two types of change agents: a. the ‘transformative commanders’, leaders adept at instigating profound, organization-wide change; b. intraorganizational 5^th generation CINOs. Second, it introduces a dual-pronged framework specifically designed to harness and streamline a bottom-up innovation within military organizations, and in particularly within the context of the IDF. This interdisciplinary framework is derived from both sociological and organizational systems engineering perspectives. The methodology employed to delineate its contributions leverages the theory of systematic operative design.