The Rapid Innovation Capability (RIC) enables UK Defence to maintain their advantage by offering fresh perspectives from across industry to quickly solve challenges. The RIC team assesses problems and assigns the best team to deliver value that can be evolved to embedded capability.  

Why does UK Defence need a Rapid Innovation Capability? 

Threats from state and non-state actors are presenting technology advances in traditional military hardware, lethal adaptations of cheaper, ubiquitous civilian technologies, the application of cyber warfare and the manipulation of the information environment simultaneously. 

UK Defence needs to adapt to maintain the technological edge, respond to the changes in the geopolitical landscape and adversary capabilities, all of which are changing at faster rates. 

How does the Rapid Innovation Capability help? 

The RIC offers agile delivery that brings together industry, including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and academia, to provide a customer, problem and mission-focused approach to deliver innovation within weeks. 

The RIC works alongside the customer to articulate the problem for industry to propose the best way forward. Using an agile methodology, taking fast and incremental steps, the RIC affords flexibility to the Customer to adjust the course of delivery, according to the findings and increasing understanding. 

The RIC considers and can support the evolution of outputs beyond delivery to ensure that learning from commissions can be exploited.

Sponsored by Defence Intelligence, the RIC is now available for all of UK Defence. 

 
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Rapid Innovation Capability infographic

Partnership with providers

The RIC creates value through increasing the diversity of the supply chain and managing these new teams. It enables access to and management of blended teams of traditional and non-traditional defence providers in a safe, assured way that’s accessible to UK defence customers

Adaptability and Flexibility

The Customer will be fully embedded within the commissions and own the direction of the solution development to ensure that solutions will be fit for purpose and delivered in a timely manner. By building flexibility in to our way of working and using an efficient and simple, tailored approach, maximum value can be delivered. We maintain the highest velocity while ensuring control and accountability by tailoring the governance and adapting the approach of each commission. 

The RIC Difference 

We understand that our customers rely on us to deliver innovation at pace to address specific operational challenges. With the Customer and industry partners, we work as one team to ensure we get the best value from the technology. We are passionate about the work we do and take ownership of delivering the best value for Defence. We are motivated by progress more than perfection, ensuring that we are taking our Customer forward on their journey.

Assess, Assign, Deliver 

RIC uses a 3-phase methodology to deliver innovation at pace. Each phase has a number of activities to support the Customer from problem articulation to delivery of an exploitable output.

Assess Assign Deliver

Assess 

The Assess phase involves a joint exploration by the Customer and RIC to scope and bound the problem to be solved. 

The RIC is experienced in supporting customers to get the crux of a problem, framing it in a way that enables industry to propose and deliver innovative solutions. 

The RIC team explore technical and commercial approaches with customers to tailor the delivery for the specific problem. The team explore integration of the potential solutions into business as usual – starting with the end in mind
 

Assign 

The Assign phase focuses on industry engagement and exploring the range of solutions. 

The RIC team will advise the best approach for engaging with industry to reach the broadest set of providers.  

The RIC seeks opportunities for collaboration between industry and with the customer throughout the competition to maximise the innovation potential.  

Working with the customer, the RIC team assess and recommend the best route forward, creating a focused Commission Delivery Team comprising Customer, industry and the RIC. 

Deliver

The RIC typically delivers in less than 12 weeks, a timeframe sufficient to make progress towards the Customer’s goals, while providing flexibility to pivot.

RIC uses agile methodology by default, enabling regular customer input to direct the value achieved by the commission.

The RIC continually considers opportunities to evolve the outputs beyond commission delivery.