From 2 to 4 September 2025, Innovation Continuum 2025 took place at the Navy Operational Experimentation Centre in Tróia, Portugal, to deliver the final integration and testing of all projects before the conclusion in October in Istanbul, Türkiye.
The Innovation Continuum is a strategic initiative led by Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and supported by the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) and the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE). It offers an opportunity to all NATO entities and Nations, industry, academia and not-for-profits, to join efforts to improve the value of innovative products in support of warfare development and accelerate their delivery.
“GLOW is a fail-safe environment where we stress test the innovation in an operationally relevant environment," explained Krzysztof Skurzak, Section Head of Science and Technology at ACT.
The Innovation Continuum provides a framework process for the experimentation and demonstration of innovative technologies from deep-tech start-ups to government research organizations. It is organized around four sequenced phases of scoping, scenario development, integration, and demonstration and experimentation, corresponding to four events throughout the year: SPARK, IGNITE, GLOW and SHINE.
This third milestone event, GLOW, is focused on the validation of planned experiments by enabling early integration and “dry runs” of innovative solutions. This is a critical success factor to assure the smooth execution of SHINE, the final Innovation Continuum event taking place in Istanbul, Türkiye, from 14 to 17 October.
Over four days, GLOW held intensive workshops, technical trials, and collaborative exercises on topics such as NextGen Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), Multi-Domain Operations, Quantum, 5G and Robotics, among others.
NCIA led and contributed to several clusters with subject matter experts from the Chief Technology Office (CTO), Command and Control (C2), the Joint ISR Centre (JISRC), the NATO Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the NATO Integrated Mission Services Centre (NIMSC), and Operational Analysis (OA).
“GLOW 2025 was yet another step to strengthen collaboration between ACT and NCIA in rapidly bringing emerging and disruptive technologies to maintain and expand NATO’s technological edge," said Vigneshwar Kalyanasundaram, NCIA Principal Engineer. "While we collaborate year-round across multiple time-zones, the opportunity to get together with DIANA, industry, and not-for-profit partners to integrate disparate solutions and test them in a military environment dramatically advanced our progress over an intense three-day sprint.”
NCIA also brought in the involvement of several DIANA innovators, not-for-profits and industry partners to strengthen collaboration and accelerate digital innovation through smart sourcing.
These efforts will culminate at the grand finale of the Innovation Continuum, SHINE. NATO entities will come together with industry, startups and research institutions to showcase cutting-edge solutions developed throughout the previous Innovation Continuum events. Watch this space for the outcome of SHINE in October 2025.