Alien: how operational art devoured strategy [Recommended Innovation Articles (and Commentary) #35]

Ben Zweibelson, PhD
5 min readSep 26, 2023

This is a series I am posting to Medium where I share links to articles concerning innovation, strategic change, design thinking, and related topics. You can simply check my article feed and find all of them based on the reoccurring title theme and numbering such as above. People ask me frequently for article suggestions, and I also maintain several innovation distribution lists where I provide commentary and suggestions on one article at a time. I do tons of research for my work and am using this Medium series to share thoughts and recommendations on what stuff I think is top-notch on a wide range of topics and disciplines. All thoughts below are of my own opinion, and while most of the linked articles will be freely available, some may be behind paywalls due to where the article is published. Follow me on Medium, Twitter (@BZweibelson), and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/benzweibelson) for new articles in this series.

Image source: https://www.military.com/special-operations/delta-force.html

Today’s article is actually a monograph- it is the September 2009 monograph on operational art and planning by Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan called “Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy.” This is a long, but fast and very well researched monograph that you will want to print off, 3-hole punch, and save at your desk for reference. I probably have…

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Ben Zweibelson, PhD

Philosopher of Conflict; works at U.S. Space Command; All opinions my own!