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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2021 Lessons Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

In 2016, brainstorming with Pete Newell of BMNT and Joe Felter at Stanford, we observed that students in our research universities had little connection to the problems their government was trying to solve or the larger issues civil society was grappling with. Many will continue to work with their problem sponsor. Jeff served in the U.S.

Lean 416
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The Red Queen Problem – Innovation in the DoD and Intelligence Community

Steve Blank

Pete Newell and I have spent a lot of time bringing continuous innovation to government organizations. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan finding and deploying technology solutions against agile insurgents. These Horizons also apply to government agencies and other large organizations.

Community 242
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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2020 Lesson Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

In 2016, brainstorming with Pete Newell of BMNT and Joe Felter at Stanford we observed that students in our research universities had little connection to the problems their government was trying to solve or the larger issues civil society were grappling with. Jeff Decker a Stanford social science researcher. Jeff served in the U.S.

Oakland 314
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Technology, Innovation, and Modern War – Class 3

Steve Blank

faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.). Advancements in these technologies will be driven by consumer demand and the potential for profit- not government directives. Hopefully the most successful of these initiatives will be broadly scaled across the department and federal government. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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E Pluribus Unum – A Rallying Cry for National Service

Steve Blank

But a half-century ago, the country started to disconnect from each other and our government when we eliminated national service. The unintended consequence of this decoupling is seemingly perpetual wars (we’ve been in Afghanistan for two decades). Few of my students knew what the DoD or other branches of government did.

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Hacking for Defense Goes National

Steve Blank

In exchange our government sponsors benefit from 1) access to talent that most likely would never have served the country, 2) getting solutions as minimum viable products/prototypes in 10 weeks, 3) exposure to a problem solving methodology used in Silicon Valley and battle tested in Iraq and Afghanistan.

San Diego 194
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Technology, Innovation, and Modern War – Class 7 – Jack Shanahan

Steve Blank

The first time you use it in Afghanistan you realize you never trained it against data that had women wearing full-length black burkas, it didn’t know what those were. The relationship ended when Google employees forced the company’s withdraw­­­ from the project. Interesting little problem.