Research on Edge Organizations in the Context of Network Centric Operations | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number NPSBAA10 001) supports research on how the Department of Defense can organize and command forces more effectively in network-centric operations, with a particular emphasis on "Edge" organizations. The work is managed through the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Center for Edge Power, which was established to conduct research and education on behalf of the OASD (NII)/DoD CIO. The government is looking for projects that can be integrated into an ongoing, coherent research stream involving NPS faculty and students as well as other top-tier research institutions. Awards are offered as grants or cooperative agreements under CFDA 12.300 (Basic and Applied Scientific Research), with no cost-sharing requirement indicated.

At its core, the program is trying to build practical and testable knowledge about alternative command-and-control (C2) and organizational designs in modern military and coalition environments. "Edge" here generally refers to moving away from rigid hierarchies toward more decentralized, adaptable, and information-enabled forms of organization where decision-making and initiative can occur closer to where information is generated and action is taken. Across the portfolio, the sponsor is interested not only in theory and new concepts, but also in evidence: empirical studies, modeling and simulation, experiments, and fieldwork that can evaluate hypotheses, measure performance, and identify which approaches work best in which operational contexts.

The announcement lays out six research areas. Research Area A (Edge Organizations) focuses on how to conceptualize, develop, deploy, and sustain Edge organizations over time. The intent is to move beyond abstract advocacy and instead define metrics and models that can be used to test claims about Edge performance. A key theme is comparative fit: when an Edge structure is more appropriate than hierarchical or other organizational forms, and how mission context and environmental conditions drive that choice. Proposals in this area would typically involve performance measurement frameworks, computational and analytical models, controlled experiments, or field studies that examine real organizational behavior and outcomes.

Research Area B (C2 Agility and Maturity) targets the ability of C2 organizations to handle diverse and sometimes unfamiliar missions well, especially under time pressure and with shifting partners. Agility is framed as the capacity to reorganize rapidly and integrate effectively with coalition partners who may have different goals, norms, or constraints. Maturity is described as the breadth of C2 approaches an organization can employ, ranging from conflicted operations through deconflicted, coordinated, collaborative, and ultimately Edge. While theoretical contributions are allowed, the program clearly signals that empirical research is preferred, particularly research that helps organizations understand what "requisite maturity" looks like for a given mission and how to achieve it.

Research Area C (Infrastructure Enhancement) is about building or improving the tools and environments needed to study Edge and C2 concepts rigorously. The sponsor is interested in virtual environments and other infrastructures that make it possible to explore how knowledge, trust, and power flow through complex organizations under different mission conditions. This can include modeling and simulation tools, laboratory experimentation setups, immersive game-based environments, and methods that improve the flow of tacit knowledge (the kind of know-how that is hard to write down but essential for coordination and judgment). In addition to new tools, enhancements to existing infrastructure that strengthen Edge research and development are also welcomed.

Research Area D (Accelerating Intercultural Knowledge Flows) concentrates on the problem of quickly sharing deep, tacit knowledge across cultural boundaries when disparate groups must work together. Culture is defined broadly here, including national, religious, ethnic, professional, and organizational cultures. The program wants to know how to induce and accelerate these knowledge flows between individuals and, importantly, between organizations, because coalition operations often fail at the seams where assumptions, language, trust, and professional norms do not align. Another major thread is understanding the conditions that enable or block knowledge transfer, with trust explicitly identified as a factor to investigate. As with other areas, theoretical work is acceptable, but the emphasis is on empirical approaches that can demonstrate what actually speeds acculturation and effective collaboration.

Research Area E (C2 in Virtual Environments) asks what parts of command and control can be performed better in virtual settings, especially immersive environments, compared to physical co-location or "media-poor" communication such as text-only interaction. Training is encouraged as an application area, but the priority interest is support to real operations, including combat and other mission types. The announcement expects more than building prototypes: proposed work should include empirical assessment through modeling, simulation, experimentation, or similar methods that can validate whether virtual approaches meaningfully improve C2 performance, coordination quality, shared understanding, or decision speed under operationally relevant conditions.

Research Area F (Emerging Research) is a catch-all intended to catalyze innovation that does not fit neatly into the first five categories. This gives proposers room to introduce new C2-related ideas, methods, or technologies that could shape the future Edge research agenda. The underlying expectation is that these ideas still connect to the broader theme of improving defense command, control, organization, and network-centric operational effectiveness, while pushing beyond the current boundaries of the program.

Eligibility is broadly open to responsible sources in academia and industry, with explicit encouragement for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions (MIs) to participate, though no funding is set aside specifically for them. At the same time, certain U.S. government organizations are not eligible to receive awards under this BAA, including U.S. government schools of higher education, Navy laboratories, and other DoD agencies; those entities are directed to coordinate with the NPS technical point of contact rather than submitting directly. The announcement also flags that some topics may involve export-controlled technology, meaning participation may be limited to U.S. persons as defined by ITAR (22 CFR 120.1 et seq.), which is important for teams planning staffing and collaboration. The opportunity was originally posted April 8, 2010, with the closing timeline extending through September 30, 2011 (archived October 30, 2011), and the administrative contact listed is Janet Norton, Contract and Grant Officer.

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