The Role of the Strategic Sponsor in Designing through Complex Security Challenges: “Leading Without Knowing All the Answers”

This is a section from some design educational material the author is developing for a military design and innovation course. All content reflects the opinion of the author and in no way reflects any endorsement or stated position beyond that of this author. Follow me on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn and Instagram to see more content like this, snapshots of things I am reading and researching, new design news, podcasts, articles, videos, and more.

The design ‘sponsor’, often termed ‘strategic sponsor’ or ‘senior decision-maker’ (as well as primary client, etc) plays a central and visionary role in any design endeavor. While in the broader commercial design movement that spans across modernity from architecture to advertising, and from urban design to political narrative construction, the application of design to complex security affairs follows in parallel with the design sponsor being the central ‘client of authority’ from which design activities spawn from. The sponsor has the authority, resources, command and stewardship of the organization and while some decentralized or independent innovation efforts might function from a grassroots level, for any meaningful design transformation to take effect, a sponsor often must take the helm.

Militaries are steep centralized hierarchies, closer in form and function to traditional religious entities than scientific disciplines or modern…