Customer Reviews

Arms and Innovation: Entrepreneurship and Alliances in the Twenty-First Century Defense Industry

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Although it is relatively easier to find books or journal articles about innovation in other sectors, publications about defense industry are produced much less frequently. For this reason this book is among major sources of information that one can find.

The book is about small businesses, but in its last chapter it also includes information applicable to larger enterprises and governments. The main points of emphasis are narrated over 6 case studies. Most of the the case studies are about very recent defense projects, like mine resistant vehicles and unmanned vehicles.

Chapter 1 introduces and discusses the main points of emphasis. Each following chapter describes a case study. Last chapter reviews and concludes the main points of emphasis. The case study chapters are easy to read, since they include story of the defense projects. I personally enjoyed reading these chapters. First and last chapters are more concentrated with direct results, thus reading them needs more care.

All case studies are from USA. The writer provides detailed information about each project. Some of the information comes from people involved in the projects, so most probably even people familiar with these projects will find the details interesting.

The writer provides around 50 to 100 footnotes for each chapter. Actually the foot notes consume almost a quarter of the total page count of the book. Researchers will find these footnotes very valuable, as they direct the reader to the sources containing more detailed information about the subject in consideration.

Although the book could contain deeper discussions, the book would be harder to read in that case. I strongly recommend the book to people working in defense industry, government and military officers and all other readers interested in innovation.

As I finish my MBA and looking to go back into the defense industry after a two year hiatus. I found this book thoroughly helpful in understanding business strategy, and how small defense industry businesses position themselves among the larger giants such as the Lockheed Martins and Northrups. It offers a high level overview of how the industry works in terms of contracts.

I completely agree with one of the other poster that due to the nature of the industry it's really hard to find books in discussing this type of subject matter and would recommend this book to anyone in the industry who wants to understand the industry from a higher level.