...To their credit, the authors of the National Defense Strategy recognized that “success no longer goes to the country that develops a new fighting technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting.” The NDS charges agency leaders with “organizing for innovation,” handing them an explicit mandate for change.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. The sort of structural reforms advocated here are a near-insurmountable challenge in a rigidly hierarchical institution with hundreds of empowered stakeholders and two million employees. So the department instead remains focused on developing new tools rather than thinking of ways to integrate them and adapt its way of fighting, all while urging its people to be more creative, more risk-taking, more agile—more innovative.

But innovation can’t be commanded. It can only be encouraged and enabled...