Spanish Navy’s Office of Innovation

The current environment of globalization, competitiveness and intensive use of new technologies requires the Spanish Navy to evolve in a continuous, agile and resilient manner. The best and most important asset of the Navy is its personnel and to maintain the relevance and advantage in this dynamic environment, we need to exploit the talent, know-how, expertise, creativity and entrepreneurship of all Spanish Navy professionals.

For this purpose, and derived from the Navy's Digital Transformation Plan, the Spanish Navy Office of Innovation (OFINAR in its Spanish initials) has recently been set to encourage, evaluate and support the implementation of any proposal of Navy personnel (both civilian and military) considered viable and that may provide added value to the organization, its staff or the capabilities offered by the Naval Service.

To this end and through the intranet website Armad@Innova, any member of the Navy may submit ideas and innovative proposals in any field, except those related to the generation of tactical doctrine derived from the development of operations and exercises.

OFINAR will study the proposals and assess them for further development and implementation if considered feasible through the already established channels. This way of proceeding is intended to make OFINAR a kind of internal ‘ideas accelerator’ for the organization.

With Armad@Innova, users will be able to track the projects in which they participate, exchange ideas through a forum and stay informed with the latest innovation news concerning the Armed Forces. To promote the culture of innovation, each semester all Navy personnel will be informed of a specific ‘challenge of innovation’ to improve a situation, product, service or process, limiting the responses to a standard format for subsequent treatment and analysis.

To encourage participation, the Chief of Staff of the Spanish Navy (AJEMA) has established the ‘Navy Innovation Award’ which will be presented every year for the best innovation proposal received.