The Defense Innovation Board (DIB) advises the Department of Defense on adopting and scaling innovation across its culture, workforce, organization, processes, and technology. The Defense Science Board (DSB) advises on scientific and technical challenges, including technology, manufacturing, and acquisition processes. The clearest distinction: the DIB focuses on how DoD innovates; the DSB focuses on complex science and technology questions. The DSB charter also expressly excludes advice on individual procurements.
What does each board do?
Defense Innovation Board
The DIB is a federal advisory committee that provides independent recommendations to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense through the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Its 2024–2026 charter covers innovation adoption across DoD culture, technology, organizational structures, processes, and functions. It also addresses emerging and disruptive technologies, commercial innovation practices, organizational and human-capital issues, and how to use the U.S. innovation ecosystem for national security. Read the DIB charter.
Defense Science Board
The DSB provides independent advice on issues supporting DoD’s scientific and technical enterprise. Its charter identifies science, technology, manufacturing, and acquisition processes, as well as other matters assigned by senior department leaders. The board is intended to tackle pressing, complex technological problems and identify technologies or applications that could strengthen national security. Read the DSB charter and board information.
How do their roles differ?
| Question | Defense Innovation Board | Defense Science Board |
|---|---|---|
| Main lens | How DoD can adopt and scale innovation across people, culture, organization, practices, processes, and technology. DIB charter | Scientific and technical challenges, including technology, manufacturing, and acquisition processes. DSB charter |
| Expertise described by DoD | Innovation experience gained outside the department, as described by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in 2016. Carter’s remarks | Scientists and technologists with deep expertise in weapons systems and defense research and development, in Carter’s description. Carter’s remarks |
| Illustrative work | Studies on the National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, barriers to moving products into DoD, and internal barriers to innovation, described in a 2024 DoD account. 2024 DoD account | The charter describes its remit; the cited charter does not provide a single illustrative task for comparison. DSB charter |
| Individual procurements | The cited DIB charter does not state the DSB’s individual-procurement exclusion as the DIB’s defining boundary. DIB charter | The charter says the DSB is not established to advise on individual DoD procurements. DSB charter |
What do the differences look like in practice?
A question about whether DoD can change its talent systems, organizational habits, or adoption of commercial practices fits the DIB’s broad innovation remit. A question about a complex scientific or technical problem, manufacturing, or acquisition processes fits the DSB’s stated remit. These are differences in advisory focus, not a claim that the boards operate in isolation from one another.
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DoD’s 2024 account of DIB work described studies on building the National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, addressing the “valley of death” between a prototype or commercial product and a DoD contract, and lowering internal barriers to innovation. Those are examples reported at the time, not a statement of the board’s current agenda. See DoD’s 2024 account.
The DIB’s inaugural meeting in 2016 offers another historical illustration of its organizational and workforce focus. DoD reported interim recommendations that included a department chief innovation officer, a computer science career track, a digital ROTC program, and evidence-based, outcome-driven policies and experimentation practices. These were proposals discussed at that time; the report does not establish that DoD adopted them. Read Carter’s remarks on the meeting.
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Why are there two boards?
At the DIB’s first meeting, then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter summarized the distinction: “The Defense Science Board, of which I was long a member, is comprised of scientists and technologists with deep expertise in weapons systems and defense R&D.” He said the DIB had “a different membership and a different role,” with members selected for innovation records outside DoD and experience that could inform talent management, organizational practice, technology, and strategy. Read the full remarks.
That distinction remains useful as a guide to their charters: the DIB considers how the department can innovate and change, while the DSB focuses on scientific and technical matters. For current membership, leadership, and governance details, consult each board’s current official materials; the DIB charter cited here is designated 2024–2026, while the DSB charter available in the cited materials is designated 2022–2024.
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