Citation:
Giglio, Edoardo, Military Innovation, Society and Geopolitical Transformation: A Synthesized Typology and Dual-Index Framework for Evaluating Technology Portfolios in Asymmetric Conflict. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6955444 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6955444
Abstract
Military innovation sits at the intersection of technology, society, and geopolitical transformation: the technologies developed to meet security threats reshape civil-military boundaries, influence economic structures, raise governance and ethical challenges, and diffuse into civilian applications across national innovation systems. Yet systematic, reproducible frameworks for evaluating military innovation across technology categories — and for situating those evaluations within broader societal and international contexts — remain underdeveloped. This study introduces a synthesized five-category innovation typology (disruptive, sustaining, basic research, moonshot, frugal) adapted from foundational commercial innovation management theory, and develops two quantitative evaluation formulas: the Innovation Impact Index (II), aggregating urgency, adaptability, technological maturity, and resource investment on a standardised Likert scale; and the Innovation Maturity Index (IM), weighting strategic importance against average time to fruition. The framework is applied to eight Global War on Terror (GWOT) case studies and tested for robustness through sensitivity analysis. Frugal and sustaining innovations yield the highest immediate-impact scores (4.75 and 4.45); moonshot innovations record the highest maturity index, reflecting transformative potential over decade-scale horizons. Findings are discussed with reference to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, NATO procurement dynamics, dual-use technology diffusion, and the governance and ethical questions raised by emerging autonomous and AI-enabled military capabilities. The framework is transferable across national contexts and offers a decision-support tool for policymakers, procurement authorities, and analysts working at the technology-society interface in contemporary asymmetric conflict.
Keywords: Military innovation, frugal innovation, disruptive innovation, dual-use technology, technology assessment, innovation portfolio
Citation:
Giglio, Edoardo, Military Innovation, Society and Geopolitical Transformation: A Synthesized Typology and Dual-Index Framework for Evaluating Technology Portfolios in Asymmetric Conflict. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6955444 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6955444