Civil–Military Innovation Sprints: Bridging Europe's Security and Innovation Ecosystems

Introduction 

In the years after the Cold War, European spending on defence and military R&D has steadily decreased until 2023. However, as highlighted by the European Defence Agency (2025), defence expenditure increased by 19% between 2023 and 2024. This shift reflects a renewed focus on Europe’s security environment, particularly in response to Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Recent comments from across the Atlantic have also sparked a conversation about the need for stronger European resilience and autonomy. Moreover, the war in Ukraine showed the importance of agility and adaptability in modern warfare. Initiatives such as the Defence Readiness Omnibus adopted by the European Commission emerged. However, unlike in the past, when the development of cutting-edge technologies was heavily led by military agencies, today’s most important advancements are increasingly driven by the private sector (28DIGITAL, 2025). 

Despite increased investment and a growing innovation base, Europe lacks structured mechanisms to connect operational military needs with early-stage talent, entrepreneurs, and capital, limiting its ability to translate technological potential into deployable capabilities. This gap constitutes a strategic vulnerability, as delays in translating innovation into operational capability reduce Europe’s ability to respond to rapidly evolving threats. In contexts such as the war in Ukraine, where adaptation cycles are measured in weeks rather than years, the inability to rapidly align technological development with operational needs can result in a significant capability disadvantage. This paper proposes Civil-Military Innovation Sprints as a mechanism to bridge this gap by creating a structured pipeline from operational problem identification to venture formation and capability development. 

The Changing Defence Innovation Landscape

In recent years, the defence innovation landscape has experienced a fundamental change. The shift was prompted by the increasing importance of dual-use technologies and the emerging role of private-sector actors. Unlike in the traditional defence-led innovation model popular in the 20th century, innovation now occurs increasingly in the commercial-use market and is later adopted for military purposes (28DIGITAL, 2025). 

The private sector is characterised by rapid development and greater adaptability, but this shift introduces the need for regular, meaningful dialogue between the public and private sectors and for increased investments specifically in dual-use goods (28DIGITAL, 2025). 

This is reflected in the context of the war in Ukraine, where startups, SMEs, and mid-sized firms with civilian deep-tech backgrounds have become key contributors to the country’s defence, rapidly providing essential capabilities to the armed forces. Shortened innovation cycles and the combination of state-of-the-art and low-cost scalable technologies have enabled faster adaptation on the battlefield, particularly through developments in AI, cyber, quantum, and space-based systems (European Commission, 2025). 

A clear illustration of this shift is the evolution of drone technologies: although initially developed for military purposes, their rapid advancement in civilian markets has significantly influenced subsequent military applications. This reflects the increasingly iterative and interconnected nature of contemporary innovation cycles. At the same time, this transformation has been accompanied by the rapid expansion of Europe’s defence innovation ecosystem, with over 230 defence tech startups emerging since 2022 (European Commission, 2025). However, this growing innovation base also introduces new coordination challenges within the defence ecosystem.

The missing pipeline

While the importance of collaboration between military actors, private companies, and research institutions is widely acknowledged, including in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly report (Baldwin, 2024), and the European Commission identifies a “notable disconnect between defence R&D efforts… and procurement processes”  in its EU Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap, existing mechanisms remain insufficient to operationalise such partnerships in practice. Initiatives such as EUDIS Matchmaking and national defence innovation hubs have been introduced to address this issue, but these mechanisms remain fragmented and fail to ensure a consistent transition from early-stage innovation to deployable capability. In particular, startups and other non-traditional new entrants repeatedly face a knowledge and information gap when venturing into the defence sector. Many of them do not have direct access to end users, such as armed forces, prime contractors, or system integrators and lack basic information on operational needs (European Commission, 2025). 

As a result, early-stage innovators are unable to align their solutions with real military requirements, limiting the translation of technological innovation into operational capability. Moreover, the European Commission (2025) emphasises the need for a fundamental change in mindset and procedures inherited from peacetime conditions, highlighting agility, speed, collaboration, and risk-taking as essential elements of modern defence capability development. However, while policy efforts primarily focus on accelerating infrastructure and funding mechanisms, they overlook a critical underlying issue: the persistent cognitive and communication barriers between key actors, including startups, military institutions, and policymakers. These barriers directly contribute to the lack of a common understanding and to limited interaction among multiple actors. It prevents early-stage innovations from being effectively aligned with operational needs. That results in innovation happening too late in the cycle, with many projects being cut down before they reach practical testing and large-scale deployment. 

The solution 

To address the coordination and communication failures identified above, this paper proposes short, time-bound Civil-Military Innovation Sprints as a structured mechanism to enable early alignment between key actors and improve the translation of innovation into operational capability. The sprints introduce a structured, problem-driven format of interaction between stakeholders. They aim to facilitate direct interaction among military actors, startups, and institutional stakeholders in a controlled, time-constrained environment. The sprint model is embedded within a broader innovation process but centres on a short, intensive engagement phase lasting approximately two weeks.

Prior to the sprint, military actors, alongside the managing body of the Sprint, define specific operational challenges, which are translated into clear and actionable problem statements. Based on these challenges, a selected group of startups and technical teams is invited to participate, ensuring relevance and domain-specific expertise.

During the sprint, startups and technical teams develop solutions while working in close, continuous interaction with military representatives and institutional stakeholders, ensuring that multiple perspectives are incorporated throughout the development process. The continuous feedback allows innovators to test assumptions and refine solutions in response to real operational constraints. The primary output of the sprint consists of validated concepts that demonstrate both technical feasibility and operational relevance, providing a foundation for further testing, funding, and potential integration into procurement pathways.

Existing innovation instruments, such as innovation hubs or funding programmes, foster collaboration between actors at a later stage of the innovation process and assume a shared understanding of operational needs and technological capabilities. This assumption frequently proves untrue and results in misaligned projects failing to progress beyond the initial development stages. Civil-Military Innovation Sprints are designed to intervene early in the innovation process and to shape subsequent stages of development, ensuring that projects remain relevant and executable. They enable participants to jointly define problems and test assumptions, and refine solutions in real time, reducing information asymmetries and aligning expectations at an early stage. 

As a result, the sprint shifts the point of coordination forward in the innovation cycle, decreasing the likelihood of late-stage failure and improving the overall efficiency of capability development. Unlike existing innovation initiatives, which assume alignment between actors at the point of entry, Civil-Military Innovation Sprints are specifically designed to create alignment before significant resources are committed. The implementation of such sprints could be integrated into existing European and transatlantic innovation frameworks, including initiatives supported by the European Innovation Council, the European Defence Agency, NATO DIANA, or within the project structures of the European Defence Fund.

The implications

Defence innovation usually fails because alignment happens too late. This solution shifts alignment to the earliest stage. Additionally, it has several implications for the organisation of defence innovation in Europe. First, it suggests a shift in policy focus from primarily accelerating funding and infrastructure towards enabling early-stage alignment between actors. Integrating structured sprint formats into existing European and transatlantic innovation frameworks would allow institutions to facilitate direct interaction between military actors and innovators at the beginning of the innovation cycle, rather than assuming alignment at later stages. Second, implementing such mechanisms could improve the overall efficiency of the defence innovation system. By reducing information asymmetries and enabling early validation of assumptions, Civil-Military Innovation Sprints decrease the likelihood of misaligned projects progressing through costly development phases. This would lead not only to shorter innovation cycles but also to more effective resource allocation. 

At the same time, the model faces several practical limitations. Defence innovation is subject to security constraints, restricted access to information, and institutional rigidities that may limit the extent of direct interaction between actors. Moreover, the scalability of such sprint formats across different Member States and organisational contexts remains a challenge. Nevertheless, as a complementary mechanism embedded within existing frameworks, Civil-Military Innovation Sprints could offer a feasible approach to addressing a key structural weakness in the current system.

Sources

Baldwin, H. (2024) Critical dual-use technologies: commercial, regulatory, societal and national security challenges. NATO Parliamentary Assembly General Report, 26 August. Available at: https://www.nato-pa.int/download-file?filename=/sites/default/files/2024-12/051%20ESC%2024%20E%20rev.2%20fin%20-%20CRITICAL%20DUAL-USE%20TECHNOLOGIES%20-%20BALDWIN%20REPORT.pdf (Accessed: 16 April 2026).

European Commission (2025) EU Defence Industry Transformation Roadmap. Available at: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu (Accessed: 14 April 2026).

European Defence Agency (2025) Defence Data 2024–2025. Brussels: European Defence Agency. Available at: https://eda.europa.eu/docs/default-source/brochures/2025-eda_defencedata_web.pdf (Accessed: 13 April 2026).

Metinko, C. (2025) ‘Defense Tech Venture Funding Gains Traction’, Crunchbase News, 12 February. Available at: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/defense-tech-funding-growth-yir-2024/ (Accessed: 16 April 2026).

28DIGITAL (2025) Digital and Defence Innovation for Europe’s Strategic Autonomy. Available at: https://28digital.eu (Accessed: 13 April 2026).