Acquisition Innovation Hub

Welcome to NCMA’s innovation hub. We invite you to provide your insight with us: share your success stories, comment, pass along ideas and articles to colleagues, and suggest new ideas. Send them all to me, Anne Laurent, Director, Professional Practice and Innovation, at [email protected].

Contract Management Magazine's Innovation's Column

These monthly columns feature examples of innovation in and around the contracting community, bringing you ideas, approaches, methods tools to inform and challenge you to explore and attempt new approaches.

• New AI Marketplace Is a Safe Place for Unlearning Common Knowledge (October 2022)
• Smarter AI Acquisition Is the Focus for 2022 NCMA Innovation in Contracting Award Winners (September 2022)
• Air Force-MIT Phantoms PREP to Buy and Use Artificial Intelligence (August 2022)
• Industry Perspectives on Contracting With the Defense Department (July 2022)
• How the DIU Delivers Commercial Capabilities at Speed (June 2022)
• Innovation-Boosting Solicitations Now Here to Stay (May 2022)
• Driving Innovation Into the Defense Acquisition and Sustainment System (April 2022)
• Why You Need an Innovation Project Leader (March 2022)
• Essential Approaches to Ushering in the New Era of Public-Private Technological Innovation (January 2022)
• Innovation Mindset Molds a Contracting SPARTN (December 2021)
• Contracting for the Urgent Future (November 2021)
• We Are in an Acquisition War. Contracting Professionals Must Lead It. (October 2021)
• To Lure Innovators, Give Them Clarity and Time and Avoid Redundancy (September 2021)
• Accelerating the Acquisition Kill Chain (August 2021)
• Want to Bring on Innovative Small Businesses? There’s a Tool for That (July 2021)
• The Curiosity to Explore, The Humility to Learn, The Boldness to Act (June 2021 Issue)
• Leading Procurement Innovation: How to prepare yourself for driving your organization’s procurement innovation strategy (May 2021 Issue)
• Innovations:  No Contract, No Budget, No Protests: Public-Private Collaboration Delivers Contracting Innovation
• Innovations: What Makes Public Sector Innovation Different (March 2021 Issue)
• Innovations: Making the Pentagon an Even More Attractive Customer for AI Upstarts (February 2021 Issue)
• Innovations: The View from Inside: A Contracting Officer Embeds in a Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firm (January 2021 Issue)
• Innovations: Pricing Innovation—Century-Old Cost-Basing Doesn’t Work (December 2020 Issue)
• Innovations: Regaining DOD’s Lost Influence in New Technology Markets (November 2020 Issue)
• Defense Efforts to Attract Innovators are Falling Short (October 2020 Issue)
• Permissible Exercises of Authority (PEAs): Innovating Within the FAR (September 2020 Issue)
• Imagining a New Defense Acquisition System Based on Other Transaction Authority (August 2020 Issue)
• Contracting Creativity Powers Air Force Pitch Days (July 2020 Issue)
• Clearing COVID-19 from the Defense Supply Chain  (June 2020 Issue)

Contract Management Magazine's Supply Lines

Welcome to Supply Lines, a bimonthly column in Contract Management about the intersection of supply chain management and contract management.

• President Biden’s 100-Day Report (November 2021)
• Supply Chain Year in Review (September 2021)
• The Importance of Services in Value Chain Management (July 2021)
• Supply Chain Mapping for Contracting Professionals (May 2021 Issue)
• Don’t Just Buy American, Build America (March 2021 Issue)
• Examining the Intersection of Supply Chain Management and Contract Management (February 2021)
• Transparency Is Critical in Contracts and Supply Chains (December 2020 Issue)

Outside the Box Blog

Thoughtful commentary from Anne Laurent and the community about trends, surprises, lessons, and cautions in pursuit of Acquisition Innovation.

• May 10: What Should Acquisition Innovators Take From Ukraine?
• November 20: Why We Innovate
• November 5: If You Want People to Take Risks, Teach Them How and Reward the Risk, Not the Outcome
• September 17: The Answer Is Out There, Neo
• August 31: Supply Chains Are Out, Networks Are In. Let the Headaches Begin
• August: 3: Platform One: Is Software Eating the Government?
• July 15: A Guest Post by a Contracting Innovation Pioneer
• July 8: What Is the Acquisition Innovators Weekly?
• July 1: It’s Time for a Fresh Brew
• June 24: Building Supply Chain Immunity
• June 17: Is VC 101 in Your Future?

Read all Outside the Box Blog Posts

Power to the Solution-Makers

In December 2019, during GCMS, NCMA held a brainstorming session focused on the biggest challenges in the contracting profession. Nearly 800 contract professionals participated and voted to select the top contracting challenges. The top three were assigned to “Solution Activators” who championed each problem statement. These are their solutions.

• Hiring in Contracting: The Playbook
• Overcoming Overregulation

What Works in Innovation

Read about successful innovations as they are happening. Learn how innovators are using new procurement authorities, waivers, and the full flexibilities in acquisition regulations along with experimental commercial purchasing techniques. We are looking for your stories so submit a What Works in Innovation entry form today.

• Good Stock: Using Market Intelligence to Build a U.S. Supply of Government Working Dogs
• An SBIR Primer for Government and Small and Large Businesses
• Other Transaction Agreement Speeds COVID-19 Isolation Unit into Us