Innovation

Chapter 1. Innovation: Discovering Processes for Bringing New Products to Market

The Section High Alpha Pass is one of the slowest and most dangerous maneuvers performed by the Blue Angels, the United States Navy’s legendary flight demonstration team. The idea for the maneuver originated in 1992 with John Foley, then the team’s lead solo pilot. But it took weeks for the elegant maneuver—which requires two pilots to slow their F/A-18 Hornets to a few knots above stall speed and then pitch up to a steep angle at low altitude—to be perfected and integrated into the team’s air show routine.

“The maneuver had never been done with two airplanes. It’s scary enough doing it with one airplane,” says Foley. “The first step was proof of concept. We had to figure out the contingencies. What if something went wrong? What if one plane lost an engine? We had to go out and test it. You couldn’t test it in a simulator because no one had ever done it before.”

After Foley and his wingman had thoroughly tested the risky maneuver, they had to sell it to the rest of the team. “The hardest part was integrating the maneuver into the air show. We had to get the team to buy into it and we had to explain the purpose,” says Foley. “What’s really cool is that more than 20 years later, it’s still part of the Blue Angels air show.”

The Section High Alpha Pass, shown in Figure 1, is a textbook example of how innovation works in the real world. It wasn’t enough that Foley had a great idea; he had to prove it ...