Beyond the Obvious in Defense Production
How engineering choices, incentives, and more coherent arrangements expand American industrial base capacity.
American Industrial Capability ProjectStrengthening America's ability to build extraordinary things.
America has a proud history of making great things. We believe its next industrial chapter can be greater still.
Where we're starting
America possesses extraordinary industrial talent, technology, and capital.
Yet enormous opportunities remain unrealized because productive capability depends on how companies, suppliers, investors, and institutions fit together. Decisions made in one organization shape what becomes possible in another.
The American Industrial Capability Project (AICP) brings original research and experienced practitioners together to understand how American industry develops its capabilities, succeeds, encounters constraints, and discovers new possibilities. That understanding may also lead to better decisions, different industrial arrangements, and capabilities worth developing.
Our ambition is to revitalize American productive capability, with manufacturing at the center of our work. DIFI investigates the defense industrial base; LSEI investigates how life sciences enterprises think and perform. Each pursuit follows its own questions while contributing to the wider AICP mission.
Defense industrial research
Defense Industrial Frontiers Initiative
The defense industrial base consists of extraordinary people, companies, technologies, and institutions. DIFI pursues deeper understanding of the complex relationships that determine what the larger system achieves, and the possibilities that understanding reveals.
Explore the Defense Industrial Frontiers Initiative →Life sciences research
Life Sciences Excellence Initiative
Talbot West's Life Sciences Excellence Initiative investigates how enterprises become more intelligent, capable, and economically successful. Executive research participation provides one way to investigate meaningful company-specific questions and contribute to wider research.
Explore the Life Sciences Excellence Initiative →The thinking behind the project
A Theory of Enterprise Coherence
Organizations full of capable people often fail to act on what they collectively know. This theory explains how knowledge, incentives, systems, and decisions shape enterprise performance.
Read A Theory of Enterprise Coherence →Industrial Base Coherence
Industrial output depends on the relationships among suppliers, manufacturers, capital, technology, and institutions. This theory examines how those relationships set what the industrial base can produce.
Read Industrial Base Coherence →Help shape what's next
We're bringing together people who want America to be better at building what matters. Early participants can help shape the inquiries we pursue, the relationships we develop, and the practical opportunities we bring to life.