Leaders with the XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg Senior Leaders held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday, Dec. 13 for the Fort Bragg Innovation Outpost. 

This event marked the beginning of the construction for the Fort Bragg Innovation Outpost, demonstrating their commitment to innovation, and providing all units with a collaborative space to promote a data-centric culture at Fort Bragg.

“Innovation requires experimentation, but too often that experimentation happens far from the soldiers, and we want to change that…” remarked CPT Lauren Hansen, the XVIII Airborne Corps Innovation Officer.

Over the past two years, Fort Bragg has worked to grow a culture of innovation. The organizing principle behind a culture of innovation is to create opportunities to solve tough problems by developing and integrating new technologies, assist service members with their daily duties, identify and improve inefficiencies, increase overall productivity and improve the total force.

“We are in a global competition and must equip our warfighters with the critical resources

and technologies to ensure that we win the future fight,” said Col. Dan Kearney, Director of

Project Ridgway, the XVIII Airborne Corps innovation program, in a press release. “The Fort Bragg Innovation Outpost will serve as a venue that embodies our data-centric culture and allows for our community to collaborate, expand, and accelerate our ability to deploy, fight, win and survive.”

“Innovation is a team sport, so this is all about bringing together the right people, ideas and resources…” shared Hansen.

A data-centric culture trains and educates leaders and Soldiers to rapidly integrate new

digital technologies, continuously leverage credible, quantitative information to enable

decision making, employs AI-enabled methodologies and processes to streamline staff

tasks and business practices. The Innovation Outpost aspires to promote innovation and

competition to exploit the leading edge of data and information.

Hansen shared what the next move is for implementing innovative strategies within Fort Bragg. “We have the tools, the infrastructure, now it's a matter of getting the right people and expertise together and growing and developing that talent so that they can lead innovation efforts.”