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Defense Innovation Board

What Is the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, and What Does It Advise On?

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board advises senior DoD officials on adopting innovation, but its charter excludes individual procurement and acquisition decisions.

By TheFinanceBase Team 3 min read
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The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board (DIB) is an advisory committee that recommends ways the Department of Defense (DoD) can adopt innovation. It advises the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense through the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E)). It can make recommendations, but it does not set DoD policy or decide what the department buys. Its 2024–2026 charter expressly excludes advice on individual procurement and acquisition matters.

What the Defense Innovation Board advises on

The DIB’s remit is about how the department finds, adopts and scales innovation—not selecting or purchasing a particular weapon or service. The board’s 2024–2026 charter describes several connected areas of advice:

  • Innovation pathways and pipelines: how DoD can move promising ideas toward adoption.
  • Emerging and disruptive technologies: how the department can respond to technologies that may change its capabilities or operating environment.
  • Commercial innovation practices: strategy, management, processes, architectures, organizational behavior and design, human capital, decision-making, and scaling.
  • The U.S. innovation ecosystem: opportunities to draw on it in support of national security.

The broader goal is to address challenges and accelerate innovation across DoD’s culture, technologies, organizational structures, processes and functions. The charter also calls for a membership balance reflecting relevant experience, including technology development, early-stage investment, organizational and talent leadership, national-security and technology policy, and the ethical and societal implications of emerging technologies. Read the DIB charter and membership balance plan.

Who receives its advice, and who makes decisions?

The charter names the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense as the DoD appointing authority. The USD(R&E) sponsors the board and serves as the route through which it advises those senior officials. The officials may act on recommendations under DoD policy and procedures; the charter does not give the DIB decision-making authority. In practical terms, the board recommends and department officials decide whether to act.

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Does the DIB make procurement decisions?

No. The charter says the board was not established to advise on individual DoD procurement or acquisition matters. It also bars assigning a task that would require a member to participate personally and substantially in a procurement or acquisition action, or put that member in the role of a contracting, procurement or acquisition official. That distinction matters: the DIB can address broad innovation practices and adoption, but it is not the office that chooses a vendor or buys a specific system.

How often does it meet, and what work is publicly documented?

The 2024–2026 charter estimates four meetings per year. That is a planning estimate, not a confirmed count of meetings held. DoD’s public-meetings page lists January 13, 2025 as its latest dated meeting; the page does not establish whether later meetings took place. Check the DIB public-meetings archive.

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A DoD release about the January 13, 2025 meeting says the board met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks. It identifies Michael R. Bloomberg as chair for that meeting and reports the release of studies on scaling innovation in nontraditional industry and drone manufacturing. These details describe the 2025 event, not confirmed current board leadership. Read DoD’s release on the meeting and studies.

When was the board established?

The DIB was established in 2016. At its first public meeting, then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter described its purpose as advising him and future defense secretaries on competitiveness and a culture of innovation. He said the board was created “to advise me and future defense secretaries on how we can keep growing more competitive, stay ahead of our competitors, and stay the best, particularly by keeping DoD imbued with a culture of innovation in people, practices, organizations, and technology.” Read Carter’s remarks at the first public meeting.

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What is known about its status now?

The available charter is labeled 2024–2026, and the official meeting archive lists January 13, 2025 as its latest dated meeting. Those records do not establish whether the charter was renewed after its stated period, whether the board met later, or who currently serves as chair and members. Accordingly, the named chair and meeting details above should be understood as historical, not as a statement of the board’s current composition.

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