Arms and Innovation: Entrepreneurship and Alliances in the Twenty-First Century Defense Industry Review

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(More customer reviews)Although it is relatively easier to find books or journal articles about innovation in other sectors, publications about defense industry are produced much less frequently. For this reason this book is among major sources of information that one can find.
The book is about small businesses, but in its last chapter it also includes information applicable to larger enterprises and governments. The main points of emphasis are narrated over 6 case studies. Most of the the case studies are about very recent defense projects, like mine resistant vehicles and unmanned vehicles.
Chapter 1 introduces and discusses the main points of emphasis. Each following chapter describes a case study. Last chapter reviews and concludes the main points of emphasis. The case study chapters are easy to read, since they include story of the defense projects. I personally enjoyed reading these chapters. First and last chapters are more concentrated with direct results, thus reading them needs more care.
All case studies are from USA. The writer provides detailed information about each project. Some of the information comes from people involved in the projects, so most probably even people familiar with these projects will find the details interesting.
The writer provides around 50 to 100 footnotes for each chapter. Actually the foot notes consume almost a quarter of the total page count of the book. Researchers will find these footnotes very valuable, as they direct the reader to the sources containing more detailed information about the subject in consideration.
Although the book could contain deeper discussions, the book would be harder to read in that case. I strongly recommend the book to people working in defense industry, government and military officers and all other readers interested in innovation.


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With many of the most important new military systems of the past decade produced by small firms that won competitive government contracts, defense-industry consultant James Hasik argues in Arms and Innovation that small firms have a number of advantages relative to their bigger competitors. Such firms are marked by an entrepreneurial spirit and fewer bureaucratic obstacles, and thus can both be more responsive to changes in the environment and more strategic in their planning. This is demonstrated, Hasik shows, by such innovation in military technologies as those that protect troops from roadside bombs in Iraq and the Predator drones that fly over active war zones and that are crucial to our new war on terror. For all their advantages, small firms also face significant challenges in access to capital and customers. To overcome such problems, they can form alliances either with each other or with larger companies. Hasik traces the trade-offs of such alliances and provides crucial insight into their promises and pitfalls. This ground-breaking study is a significant contribution to understanding both entrepreneurship and alliances, two crucial factors in business generally. It will be of interest to readers in the defense sector as well as the wider business community.

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