Innovation & Imagination

With multiple post-9/11 missions constantly assigned to the United States Coast Guard, including reallocating resources to our Domestic Maritime Borders, enforcing exclusive economic zones in the Indo-Pacific, adapting to new Arctic challenges, conducting high-seas vessel interdictions, and most recently, addressing the latest issues in the Middle East, the world’s premier maritime law enforcement agency now finds itself overextended, short-staffed, and underfunded.

At the same time, it is still being asked to maintain the same levels of safety, protection, and Search & Rescue capabilities it has always provided here at home.

This is where the Division 7 Special Projects Group (SPG) was first conceived, as an additional source of local experts who can assist in improving or addressing any current or future gaps in the safety and security of the recreational boating community, here in Western Long Island Sound, or elsewhere.

Supporting the establishment of the U.S. Coast Guard Innovation Program , the mandates in Force Design 2028 , and the Commandant’s directive to foster a culture of continuous innovation and learning, the SPG has been established to provide, maintain, and support a collaborative, open-invitation think tank environment where skilled and talented people can share their personal and professional expertise on issues affecting recreational boating safety and security.

To promote this Coast Guard-wide effort to increase efficiency and accelerate the process of turning innovative ideas or solutions into mission results, the SPG was created to provide an environment and structured framework that encourages any subject-matter experts among us to contribute their experience and know-how to small, individual projects that fits with their own personal needs, with clearly defined goals and identifiable start and completion endpoints.

By bringing together creative and imaginative members in a decentralized, open dialogue framework that fosters collaborative brainstorming and the cross-pollination of ideas, the SPG concept has been created to ensure that the path from initial idea to meaningful impact remains clear and achievable by maintaining a nexus where leadership can directly request ideas from the group and the group can directly share ideas with leadership.