Jeremiah Monk
INTRODUCTION
The military design thinking movement represented a novel and adaptive approach to strategic problem-solving that rose to prominence in the 2010s as Western militaries grappled with the complexities of global counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Design thinking promised to revolutionize how military organizations approached complex, dynamic, and uncertain environments, helping them become more agile and effective. However, despite its early successes, the military design movement within the United States military has lost momentum as conventional warfare paradigms have reasserted dominance, especially following the war in Ukraine in the 2020s. As a result, strategic opportunities that might have been realized through a more design-centric lens are now routinely missed by the US Department of Defense. This article traces the rapid rise and decline of military design thinking in the United States and examines how the contemporary focus on conventional warfighting has caused military organizations to sideline the design movement at the expense of strategic flexibility.
The Emergence of Military Design Thinking
The roots of military design thinking can be traced to the broader movement of design thinking within civilian sectors, where it was employed as an approach to solving complex, ill-defined problems. Military design adapted this thinking to its own specific needs, particularly in the realm of strategy, operational planning, and decision-making, and connected design to the concept of Operational Art. The military version of design thinking, as it emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, borrowed from several fields, including systems theory, organizational learning, and creative problem-solving frameworks.
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