Steve Blank

JANUARY 11, 2022

This article first appeared in West Point’s Modern War Institute. We just had our final session of our Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition class. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed the class to give our students insights on how commercial technology (AI, machine learning, autonomy, cyber, quantum, semiconductors, access to space, biotech, hypersonics, and others) will shape how we employ all the elements of national power (our influence and footprint on the world stage)

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Technical Review Technology Taiwan Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2021

As an entrepreneur at times you forget that being in charge doesn’t mean you have to know everything. When it feels like you’re trapped facing an unsolvable dilemma, and wrestling with a seemingly intractable problem, remember that “getting out of your head” is the personal equivalent of the Lean Startup mantra “get out of the building.”. Learning this was a big step in making me a more effective entrepreneur.

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Customer Lean Entrepreneur Internet 395

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2021

This article first appeared in West Point’s Modern War Institute. We just had our first 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).

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Technology Russia China United States 421

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2021

We just finished the 11th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford — our first version focused on deep science and technology. I’ve always thought of the class as a minimal viable product – testing new ideas and changing the class as we learn. This year was no exception as we made some major changes, all of which we are going to keep going forward.

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Lean Technology Artificial Inteligence Intellectual Property 299

Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2021

A version of this story previously appeared in Defense One. The story of RYAN and Able Archer is an oft-told lesson of a U.S. intelligence failure, miscalculation, and two superpowers unaware they were on the brink of an accidental nuclear war — all because the Soviet Union relied on a software program to make predictions that were based on false assumptions.

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Artificial Inteligence Software United States Europe 217

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

A version of this article – co-authored with Raj Shah and Joe Felter – previously appeared in The National Interest. After hearing from 20+ guest speakers , including two Secretaries of Defense, Generals, Admirals and Policy makers in our Technology, Innovation and Modern War class – the direction of technology and the future of national security came into sharper focus.

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Technology China Government Artificial Inteligence 269

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2020

We just held our eighteenth and final session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today General James Mattis addressed the class.

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Technology China Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 14, 2020

SAVE THE DATE for the 3rd edition of Lean Innovation Educators Summit. December 16th, 10 – 1pm PST, 1 – 4pm EST , 6 – 9pm UTC. In July 2020, 400+ educators gathered online to discuss and share best practices for Lean education in the virtual environment. We learned a ton. And we’re going to do it again. Join me, Jerry Engel, Pete Newell, and Steve Weinstein and over 1,000 educators from 65 countries and 220 universities for our next Lean Innovation Educators Summit.

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Milwaukee Wisconsin Lean Community 352

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2020

We just held our fourteenth session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was Strategy, Plans and Policy in the Joint Staff.

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Technology China Artificial Inteligence Operations 217

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

We just held our twelfth session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was The Navy and Modern War.

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Technology DC Acquisition Silicon Valley 202

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

We just held our eleventh session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was Military Applications of Cyber.

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Technology Security Internet Video 306

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

We just held our tenth session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was The DoD and Modern War.

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Technology China United States Government 300

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2020

We just held our sixth session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was Innovations in Acquiring Technologies for Modern War.

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Technology China Agile Acquisition 388

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

We just held our second session 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 designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy.

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Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

We just finished our 5th annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. What a year. At the end of the quarter each of the eight teams give a final “Lessons Learned” presentation. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “here’s how smart I am, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the teams’ stories of a 10-week journey of hard-won learning and discovery.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2020

If you’re a busy startup founder, you’re likely delegating the task of scheduling key meetings about things you want/need to your admin. This is a mistake. That’s because the dialog you have in setting up the meeting is actually the first part of your meeting, not some clerical task. Treat it this way and you’re much more likely to achieve the objective you’re hoping to.

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Email Framework Founder Finance 421

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2019

It’s been almost a decade since we first started teaching the Lean Methodology. It’s remade entrepreneurship education, startup practice and innovation in companies and the government. But in all that time, we haven’t gotten a large group of educators together to talk about what it’s been like to teach Lean or the impact it’s had in their classrooms and beyond.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2019

I was honored to give the commencement speech at the University of California Santa Cruz, right down the road from the ranch. Rather than my usual talks about innovation and entrepreneurship I shared a few lessons learned after serving seven years as a public official on the California Coastal Commission. I told four stories about the conflict between money and power versus the common good.

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California Silicon Valley Michigan San Francisco 321

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

The team at Innovation Leader had me over to share some observations on how to survive in a world of disruption in large organizations. It’s worth a listen – here. 5:30: The cultural differences between startups and big companies. 8:30: Not everyone is an innovator. 9:10: Being an ambidextrous organization is the key to survival for a big company. 9:42: Apple stopped changing the world; here’s why. 10:55: The most disruptive companies are driven by founders. 11:30: How to int

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Programming Founder Startup Product 272

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I know a change is going to come. If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. Most painfully, you’ll learn that your role in the company has to change.

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Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2018

Every year I head to the East coast for vacation. We live in a semi-rural area, just ~10,000 people in town, with a potato farm across the street and an arm of the ocean in the backyard. While they own tech, smartphones and computers, most of my neighbors can’t tell you about the latest trends in AI, Bitcoin or Facebook. In contrast, Silicon Valley is an innovation cluster, a monoculture of sorts, with a churning sea of new tech ideas, sailed by entrepreneurs who each passionately believe they&#

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Rhode Island Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 30

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2018

There’s no handbook on how to evaluate and process “suggestions” and “advice” from a boss or a mentor. But how you choose to act on these recommendations can speed up your learning and make or break your career. Here’s what to keep in mind: I had a team of students working on an arcane customer problem. While they were quickly coming up to speed, I suggested that they talk to someone who I knew was an expert in the area and could help them learn much faster.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2018

We just finished our 3rd annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. Six teams presented their Lessons Learned presentations. Watching them I was left with wonder and awe about what they accomplished in 10 weeks. Six teams spoke to over 600 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

A version of this article appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Elon Musk, Alfred Sloan, and entrepreneurship in the automobile industry. The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. The guy who replaced him invented the idea of the modern corporation.

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Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 17, 2017

“…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. ”. The Red Queen Alice in Wonderland. Innovation, disruption, accelerators, have all become urgent buzzwords in the Department of Defense and Intelligence community. They are a reaction to the “red queen problem” but aren’t actually solving the problem. Here’s why. In the 20th century our nation faced a single adversary – the Soviet Union.

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Community Silicon Valley Technical Review Incubator 212

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

We just finished our second Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. Eight teams presented their Lessons Learned presentations. Hacking for Defense is a battle-tested problem-solving methodology that runs at Silicon Valley speed. It combines the same Lean Startup Methodology used by the National Science Foundation to commercialize science, with the rapid problem sourcing and curation methodology developed on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq by Colonel Pete Newell and the US Army’s Rapid

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Silicon Valley Southern California Lean San Diego 182

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2017

Light a path for the better angels. Thank you, Chancellor McLellan, President Florizone, Dean Charlebois, Dr. Hewitt, and Dr. Kilfoil for the invitation to speak today and thank you for the honorary degree. I’m honored to speak at a university whose motto is: Pray and Work. It’s pretty close to the one I had as an entrepreneur, which was – Pray it Will Work. — First, my congratulations.

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North Korea Social Media .Net Europe 252

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2017

I did a fun fireside chat with one of my most favorite people – Sebastian Thrun – at the Udacity conference. Sebastian is the embodiment of a renaissance person. I first heard about him when his driverless car won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. He founded Google X and led the development of the Google self-driving car. He was a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford and before that at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I gave the Alumni Day talk at U.C. Santa Cruz and had a few things to say about innovation. —-. Even though I live just up the coast, I’ve never had the opportunity to start a talk by saying “Go Banana Slugs.”. I’m honored for the opportunity to speak here today. We’re standing 15 air miles away from the epicenter of technology innovation. The home of some of the most valuable and fastest growing companies in the world.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2017

Getting ready for our next semester’s class, I asked my Teaching Assistant why I hadn’t seen the posters for our new class around campus. Hearing the litany of excuses that followed –“It was raining.” (The posters go inside the building.) “We still have time.” (We had agreed they were to go up a week ago) — I had a strong sense of déjà vu. When I took the job of VP of Marketing in a company emerging from bankruptcy, excuses seemed to be our main product.

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Bankruptcy Sales Channel Restful 371

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

I had to laugh when my post about what happens when innovative CEOs retire or die appeared in both the bastion of capitalism– the Harvard Business Review — and in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party – The People’s Daily. Then I didn’t. A Story is Just a Story. Why the Harvard Business Review published the story has a pretty simple explanation.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

In large companies innovators have to work twice as hard – they spend time fighting the system. In a startup, your ideas turn into reality really, really fast. A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. Lots of people have visions. Most are hallucinations. In a startup, you don’t fight the system; you are the system.

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Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 25, 2016

Filed under: Hacking For Defense , Teaching.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. No one used it when we gave it away for free. Freemium was a going out of business strategy. When a reporter asked, “Your kids must think you’re the coolest dad in the world,” I couldn’t answer the question, because I realized that I hadn’t seen my kids in three weeks.

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Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2016

The future is here it’s just distributed unevenly – Silicon Valley view of tech adoption. The threat is here it’s just distributed unevenly – A2/AD and the aircraft carrier. Sitting backwards in a plane with no windows, strapped in a 4-point harness, wearing a life preserver, head encased in a helmet, eyes covered by googles, your brain can’t process the acceleration.

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Silicon Valley PR Offshore Engineer 120

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2016

Given all that I’ve seen in my career I don’t sweat the small stuff. We didn’t talk about product; we didn’t talk about organization or raising money. We talked about our values, we talked about our hopes and dreams for the world, and that helped us realize why we were doing this project together. Startups aren’t only for twentysomethings.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Sweden 120

Steve Blank

JULY 6, 2016

Countries or people you meet sometimes don’t like our policies on a given issue, but what they almost universally admire and aspire to is American entrepreneurship, innovation, education, science and technology, and volunteerism, philanthropy. The State Department is working at the intersection of foreign policy and technology to keep Americans safe, serve the country’s interests and promote freedom of expression around the globe.

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