1 © 2006 The Aerospace Corporation Advanced Space C2 Russ Abbott, The Aerospace Corporation Roberta Ewart, USAF/SMC

2 Contents Command and control is Platforms enable … more platforms. Innovative organizations. How command intent is communicated and ensured? How responsibility and authority are assigned? How organizations communicate and operate? Centralized command — decentralized execution?

3 What is command and control? “The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander [emphasis added] over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. “Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission.” Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms Assures accountability Enables hierarchical structure and control Commander- centric

4 No horizontal communication. No dashed lines. (Is that good?) It’s not accurate as a communication or operational structure. It may represent how authority is delegated, and it may represent how responsibility is assigned, but it doesn’t represent how communication occurs or how organizations really work. Downward pointing arrows: commands. Upward pointing arrows: status reports. Can be implemented with point-to-point communication links. What’s wrong with this picture? Command and Control

5 What is Command and Control? The future of command and control is not Command and Control. In fact, the term Command and Control has become a significant impediment to progress. Efforts have been made to (re)define this term in ways that would make it more relevant to 21st century organizations and endeavors. Efforts to date, however, have not been able to overcome the deeply ingrained belief that the term Command and Control is synonymous with a specific approach, namely the way traditional military organizations are organized and operate. The term thus has become unalterably frozen in time. Dave Alberts, Director CCRP. “Agility, Focus, and Convergence: The Future of Command and Control,” The International C2 Journal, DoD/CCRP. April 2007.

6 What is Command and Control? For our purposes we will define command and control as The structures and processes through which an organization operates. The focus is on interaction among participants in the organization. David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone Everything is both an entity and a group.

7 From point-to-point links to platforms Need more than fixed point-to- point communication channels The communication system (even if just a telephone system) is the start of net-centricity Must distinguish between communication structure and command hierarchy. Becomes an additional component— not just a collection of interfaces. “Platform” But a network/platform does nothing on its own. The fundamental question How will the organization use the network/platform? Enabling communication neither eliminates responsibility nor undermines command intent.

8 It’s all (multi-sided) platforms Telephone system Voic Television infrastructure Television channel Talk show Internet Interest groups WWW WikipediaGoogle mapsCraig’s listeBay store Mashups SOA framework Service TV show Telemarketing Service Television channel Talk show Politics Civil society Courts: dispute resolutionMoney and banking system Free market economic system Other infrastructure elements Product Service … Movie marketingPolitics

9 Familiar communication “stack” (incomplete picture) Layered architectures — not functional decomposition Presentation Session Transport Network Physical WWW (HTML) — browsers + servers Applications, e.g., , IM, Wikipedia Each layer is a platform that a)is built on the layers below it b)enables higher level layers to be built on top of it c)is vulnerable to disruption.

10 Platform service provider Governance: platforms are not like most businesses Not a typical business product or service. Does not combine components from suppliers to make and sell a product for consumers. Enables interaction. Value depends on breadth of use. Often called a network effect. Examples Internet – WWW - GIG. A dating service A credit card service. A shopping center. Whoever owns/runs/controls it, has users at their mercy. Owner’s and users’ priorities may not be compatible Platform Governance of common resources becomes a central issue. Multi-sided platform A means, mechanism, or set of conventions that structure and enable interaction among parties.

11 Wise crowds Among the more interesting platforms are those that support “wise crowds.” Wikis Mailing lists Chat rooms Prediction markets Traditional wise crowds Teams Juries Democratic vote (James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds) (Scott Page, The Difference) Wise crowd criteria Diverse: different skills and information brought to the table. Decentralized and with independent participants: No one at the top dictates the crowd's answer. Each person free to speak his/her own mind and make own decision. Distillation mechanism: to extract the essence of the crowd's wisdom. Condorcet Jury Theorem (18 th century) example Five people (a small crowd). Each person has a 75% chance of being right. Probability that the majority will be right: ~90%

12 A wise crowd as assistant and companion

13 Innovative environments The Internet The inspiration for net-centricity and the GIG Goal: to bring the creativity of the internet to the DoD What do innovative environments have in common? What do innovative environments have in common? Other innovative environments The scientific and technological research process The market economy Biological evolution

14 Innovative environments To ensure innovation: Innovation is always the result of an evolutionary process. Random generation of new possibilities. Selection of the good ones. (Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea) How does this apply to organizations? Sounds simple doesn’t it? Creation and trial Encourage the prolific generation and trial of new ideas. Reaping the rewards of success Allow new ideas to flourish or wither based on how well they do.

15 Innovation in various environments Initial funding Prospect of failure Approvals Reaping rewards Biological evolution Capitalism in the small. Nature always experiments. Most are failures, which means death. (But no choice given.) None. Bottom-up resource allocation defines success. Entrepreneur Little needed for an Internet experiment. Perhaps some embarrassment, time, money; not much more. Few. Entrepreneur wants rewards. Bottom-up resource allocation. Bureaucracy Proposals, competition, forms, etc. Who wants a failure in his/her personnel file? Far too many. Managers have other priorities. Top-down resource allocation. New ideas aren’t the problem. Trying them outReaping rewards

16 To identify and adopt the C2 frameworks that encourage large, top-down, bureaucratic organizations to build platforms that enable wise crowds and facilitate innovation. To identify and adopt the C2 frameworks that encourage large, top-down, bureaucratic organizations to build platforms that enable wise crowds and facilitate innovation. Was there a message in that bottle? The challenge A network does nothing on its own. Net-centricity by itself is not the answer. Organizations use networks to build platforms—which they then inhabit. C2: the frameworks through which an organization operates.