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Ministry of Defence: Innovation Strategy

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence (Des Browne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has today launched its strategy for creating greater innovation within the defence supply chain. The MoD innovation strategy builds on the defence industrial strategy (DIS) published in 2005 as a defence White Paper (Cm 6697). The DIS set out a commitment to achieve a better understanding of the innovation process within the defence supply chain. The new innovation strategy identifies the main challenges to innovation in delivery of our defence capability. It expresses actions to address these challenges in terms of five distinct pillars. These pillars show our intent to articulate our capability needs better, provide transparency in how we translate these needs and aspirations through to delivery of capability, highlight our commitment to open architectures, which will in turn foster insertion of new or improved technology, demonstrate our commitment to new business models that provide incentives for both customers and suppliers to achieve greater innovation and communicate our desire to maintain the pace of the MoD’s acquisition processes.