The Navy Wants Help Getting People to Adopt New Technology. That Opens a Door for Non-Defense Startups.

Defense Funding
Written By Josiah Wegner

The prototype challenge the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) posted on September 25 is about people more than hardware. NAWCAD wants better ways to help its workforce adopt new technology.

What NAWCAD is asking for

NAWCAD delivers research, development, test, evaluation and sustainment for naval aviation. Its challenge, the Workforce Innovation and Capability Integration Challenge, describes what happens when an organization tries to adopt new technologies, processes and structures quickly. According to NAWCAD, the workforce faces "simultaneous capability, identity, cultural, and operational shocks," and the problem is that "the pace of change exceeds the pace of support."

The conclusion is stated plainly: "technology adoption fails when workforce adoption is treated as secondary." NAWCAD wants "practical, evidence-based ways to close the gap between the pace of change and the pace of support, so that new technologies and processes are adopted as quickly as they are introduced."

The critical focus areas are interdisciplinary collaboration, systems thinking and "learning as a part of daily performance." The listing is tagged Collaboration Tools. NAWCAD says it wants to work with "nontraditional defense contractors, nonprofit research institutions, and small businesses" to "develop and prototype novel methods."

NAWCAD already works on this problem itself. In August it described a new standardized training and certification process that it says expands the Navy's in-house fiber optic repair capability by 400 percent. The challenge asks outside organizations to help it do that kind of work faster and more broadly.

Who fits

This is my reading, not NAWCAD's list. The challenge fits companies whose product or method measurably shortens the time between "we bought a new tool" and "people use it well." That includes:

  • learning and training platforms, including adaptive learning and microlearning

  • XR, simulation and digital twins used for training

  • AI assistants and performance-support tools that guide people inside a task

  • collaboration, knowledge-management and expertise-finding software

  • digital adoption and change-management platforms

  • nonprofit research groups working on organizational behavior and learning science

A company can fit without any defense history if it has evidence that its approach changes adoption outcomes.

How the process works

The challenge is posted on the GoColosseum Marketplace, run by One Nation Innovation (ONI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. ONI describes the marketplace as free. In July 2025, Army Contracting Command-Rock Island posted a notice saying it had awarded ONI an OT-based marketplace award, with a period of performance of June 4, 2025 to June 3, 2030. The notice describes the marketplace as "a single location for the Government to issue challenges and make awards utilizing OTA, Commercial Solution Openings (CSO) and other acquisition authorities." Federal award data shows OT actions to ONI funded by NAWCAD and several other DoW offices.

In at least one recent challenge on the platform, selected respondents became ONIX consortium members and performed under ONI's Other Transaction Agreement. If that holds here, your agreement would be with ONI. Ask for ONI's member terms on IP, data rights, fees and payment timing before you commit significant effort.

The challenge closes October 15. HigherGov lists the close time as 1:00 p.m. ET, which is noon Central. Confirm the time on the live listing after you register. The listing does not publish an award amount.

How to build a strong response

  1. Anchor on one realistic scenario. NAWCAD's workforce includes engineers, scientists, testers and maintainers. Pick one adoption problem, such as engineers moving to a new digital engineering tool or technicians learning a new repair and certification process. Show how your method works there.

  2. Name the metric before the method. Evaluators need to see what gets better. Time to proficiency, error rates, rework, usage and certification pass rates are all measurable.

  3. Bring evidence. NAWCAD asks for evidence-based approaches. Results from a commercial deployment, a pilot or published research carry weight, even if they come from outside defense.

  4. Keep the prototype small and measurable. A bounded pilot with one team, a baseline and a comparison is easier to approve than an enterprise transformation.

  5. Show how it scales. Explain how the approach would move from one team to the rest of the command, and what NAWCAD staff would need to run it themselves.

Checklist

  1. Register your organization on GoColosseum.

  2. Request ONI's member terms.

  3. Choose one NAWCAD scenario and one adoption metric.

  4. Assemble your strongest evidence.

  5. Draft a small prototype plan with a measurement approach.

  6. Submit before October 15.

Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Jacob Moore, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, via DVIDS. The appearance of U.S. Department of War visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement.

Sources

Josiah Wegner https://www.bwcoconsulting.com
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