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MAY15, 2023--Steve Blank, author, entrepreneur, and Stanford University professor; joined Jim Woolsey, DAU president; for an in-depth exploration of innovation in the defense acquisition ecosystem. From artificial intelligence to new chip manufacturing techniques and methods of storing energy, harnessing the innovation of individuals and the marketplace is critical to the providing cutting edge capabilities to our warfighters. Steve Blank and Jim Woolsey discussed how the Department of Defense can learn to embrace innovation from within its own ranks and from external sources.
Steve Blank is an American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker based in Pescadero, California.
Blank created the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement, a methodology that recognized that startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but require their own set of processes and tools to be successful. His Lean Launchpad class (taught as the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps, or I-Corps) has become the standard for commercialization for all federal research[1] and has trained 1,900 teams and launched 1,000+ startups. His Hacking for Defense Class has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Jim Woolsey, serves as the President of Defense Acquisition University (DAU), a position he has held since January 2014. In this role, Woolsey leads one of the largest corporate universities in the world—responsible for the training and talent development of roughly 186,000 Department of Defense (DoD) employees. DAU’s students represent a cross-section of the Department’s Acquisition functions, including contracting, business, engineering, logistics, and program management. For the past several years, Woolsey has led DAU’s transformation to a modern learning platform that employs the full range of training modes and that empowers the workforce to tailor learning to their current job needs and future career goals. Woolsey has a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a master’s in business administration from George Mason University and was a Fellow in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI on International Relations.