I first met Shawn Carolan and his wife Jennifer at the turn of the century at 11,000 feet. I was hiking with my kids between the Yosemite High Sierra camps. Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies. The ideas were bouncing around […]
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This post previously appeared in Poets & Quants. I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. In this case Wicked doesn’t mean morally evil, but refers to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious. (Understanding and solving homelessness, disinformation, climate […]
Filed under: Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 9 Comments »
An edited version of this article previously appeared in the Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank website. I spent last week at a global Fortune 50 company offsite watching them grapple with disruption. This 100+-year-old company has seven major product divisions, each with hundreds of products. Currently a market leader, they’re watching a new and […]
Filed under: Corporate/Gov't Innovation, Customer Development | 2 Comments »
A week ago I got invited to an “innovation hero” award ceremony at a government agency. I don’t know how many of these I’ve been to in the last couple years, but this one just made my head explode. The award was for an entrepreneur who worked against all odds to buck the system to […]
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As Director of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force Pete Newell delivered innovation at speed and scale in the Department of Defense. Pete is now CEO of BMNT, a company that delivers innovation solutions and processes for governments. Here are Pete’s 5 principles that will accelerate innovation. To help a large Defense organization wrestle with how to increase […]
Filed under: Customer Development, National Security | 6 Comments »
This article first appeared in West Point’s Modern War Institute. We just had our third week of our new national security class at Stanford – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I designed the class to cover how technology will shape all the elements of national power (our influence and footprint on the world stage). In class […]
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This article previously appeared in VentureBeat. I just had a coffee with Mei and Bill, two passionate students who are on fire about their new startup idea. It’s past the “napkin-sketch” stage with a rough minimum viable product and about 100 users. I thought they had a great insight about an application space others had […]
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Remote education in the pandemic has been hard for everyone. Hard for students having to deal with a variety of remote instructional methods. Hard for parents with K through 12 students at home trying to keep up with remote learning, and hard for instructors trying to master new barely functional tools and technology while trying […]
Filed under: Hacking For Defense, Lean LaunchPad, NSF (National Science Foundation), Teaching | 7 Comments »
We just had our first week of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Given the tech-centricity of Stanford and Silicon Valley, Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I thought it was natural to design a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century […]
Filed under: National Security, Technology Innovation and Modern War | 4 Comments »
This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review AgileFall is an ironic term for program management where you try to be agile and lean, but you keep using waterfall development techniques. It often produces a result that’s like combining a floor wax and dessert topping. I just sat through my a project management meeting where […]
Filed under: Corporate/Gov't Innovation, Customer Development, Harvard Business Review | 7 Comments »
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