Unrealistically high estimates by DOD officials of sexual assaults in the military, along with hazy definitions and methodologies, have fueled the public discourse on this emotional issue, making it unnecessarily hysterical and obscuring the military’s search for solutions. While the military is expected to maintain a higher standard than society at large, the experience of colleges and universities, whose demographic is roughly the same age as the military’s, should be drawn on. Moreover, an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of criminal law will help draw the debate about the military sexual assault problem away from blaming commanders because they are not always obtaining convictions. The educational and military communities should combine their efforts to find a more holistic solution

Businesses have turned to unlimited outside thinking to inject new life into their organizations, create new products, and solve specific problems. Goldcorp, an international gold-mining company, solicited the input of outsiders through an open contest to discover the most likely concentration of gold at certain locations. The Internet responses provided more input than company expertise could by itself and the company escaped collapse. There are challenges, but properly done, crowdsourcing could enlarge the talent pool of any organization. The Intelligence Community in particular could find this industry best practice presenting more options to the Nation’s policymakers. Such a capacity is vital in an era when growing complexity raises ever more questions the Intelligence Community will be called on to answer.

Both military leaders and civilian managers conceive of organizations in a variety of ways. Yet they may not think through the models, paradigms, and theories they espouse as they affect command and control on the battlefield. The vagaries of organization theory have made it harder for organizations to work in joint and interagency environments, and since diverse thinking will be an enduring feature of the security landscape, especially in an era of accelerating change, there must be recognition that military leaders and civilian managers are guided by different and even contradictory concepts. The bureaucratic view at the Pentagon, for instance, needs to appreciate the command and control realities of combat and vice versa