Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc. And by product, I mean the creation of new hardware, services, software, tools, operations, tradecraft, etc.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

We wanted to show that if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, defense acquisition programs could operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. Stay tuned. Jeff served in the U.S.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

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 technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. And that has happened to us.

Technology 436

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 436

Steve Blank

JANUARY 5, 2023

compete more effectively through new operational concepts, organizations, and/or strategies. ” Team 3: Acquisition. Class Organization. By week 2 of the class students formed teams around a specific technology challenge facing a US government agency and worked throughout the course to develop their own proposals to help the U.S.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology China 353

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In 2007, I graduated United States Air Force Academy as a computer engineer and entered the Air Force’s acquisition corps , excited and confident about my ability to bring technology to bear for our airmen. And I couldn’t have been put in a better place: testing the Air Force’s newest network security acquisitions.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 262

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

At times this means startups operate at speeds so fast they appear to be a blur to government agencies. It’s not that these companies are smarter than Defense Department employees, but they operate with different philosophies, different product development methodologies, and with different constraints.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2023

Both are wakeup calls that victory and deterrence in modern war will be determined by a state’s ability to both use traditional weapons systems and simultaneously rapidly acquire, deploy, and integrate commercial technologies (drones, satellites, targeting software, et al) into operations at every level. The DoD has not done either of these.

Ukraine 273

Ukraine China Taiwan Russia 273

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

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. Slides 10-13). Institutional inertia is a social problem.

Technology 335

Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

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 technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Read about all the class sessions here.

Technology 228

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 228

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2024

Navy) There are several theories of how innovation in military doctrine and new operational concepts occur. Or a military service can generate innovation internally when senior military officers recognize the doctrinal and operational implications of new capabilities, e.g., Rickover and the Nuclear Navy.

China 182

China Artificial Inteligence Afghanistan Ukraine 182

Steve Blank

JANUARY 18, 2022

was fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIS, China built new weapons and developed new operational concepts to negate U.S. What if our assumptions about the survivability of these naval platforms and the ability of our marines to operate, were based on incorrect assumption about our investments in material, operational concepts and mental models?

Agile 369

Agile China Artificial Inteligence Taiwan 369

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2020

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. Acquisition, technology, and logistics. You won’t find that written down in any acquisition document.

Technology 388

Technology China Agile Acquisition 388

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

That if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, could defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. Jeff Decker a Stanford social science researcher.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

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. So, it’s incumbent on us to think about the ramifications of these acquisition decisions.

Technology 397

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 397

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

That year, as management tried to coordinate all the operating details across all the divisions, the company almost went bankrupt when poor planning led to excess inventory, with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash. Durant’s bankers and board fired him from the company he had founded. But not for Durant.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

Think of the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Chief Operating Officer of a company – but in this case the company has 3 million employees (~1.4 Until we have new vendors on the Major Defense Acquisition Program list , all we have in the DoD is innovation theater – not innovation. Acquire at Speed.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 25, 2016

As they proceeded with customer discovery, the team found that the majority of the operators who would wear these sensors were ambivalent about the introduction of a vitals monitoring platform, but were much more excited about solving geolocation problems. Their key take-away was that they would have to decide which beneficiary to focus on.

Afghanistan 120

Afghanistan Iraq Technical Review Social Media 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 25, 2016

As they proceeded with customer discovery, the team found that the majority of the operators who would wear these sensors were ambivalent about the introduction of a vitals monitoring platform, but were much more excited about solving geolocation problems. Their key take-away was that they would have to decide which beneficiary to focus on.

Afghanistan 120

Afghanistan Iraq Technical Review Social Media 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer happened on his shift. Microsoft left the 20 th century owning over 95% of the operating systems that ran on computers (almost all on desktops). If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer happened on his shift. Microsoft left the 20 th century owning over 95% of the operating systems that ran on computers (almost all on desktops). If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2020

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. The Joint Chiefs have no operational authority over troops. Global Integration of Operational Plans.

Technology 217

Technology China Artificial Inteligence Operations 217

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

Instead, their solutions must still compete for funding in a formal budgeting and acquisition process before being eligible for widespread adoption. The best prepared companies can either raise sufficient funds to keep operating or count on revenue from other sources. Recently public enterprise-AI firm C3.ai

Artificial Inteligence 326

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 326

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

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. Slides 10-13). Institutional inertia is a social problem.

Technology 122

Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 122

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone. We were asking the company’s R&D leads, the de-facto innovation leaders, who had an existing R&D process that served the company extremely well, to adopt our odd-ball projects.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

It can be more complex if you find the your target customer or users need to change or the feature set is wrong or you need to “repackage” a monolithic product into a family of products or you chose the wrong sales channel or your customer acquisition programs were ineffective. Operating in Chaos + Speed + Pivots = Success.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

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. So, it’s incumbent on us to think about the ramifications of these acquisition decisions.

Technology 133

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 133

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. The Rise of Mergers and Acquisitions -– March 2003 -2008 After the dot.com bubble collapsed, the IPO market (and most tech M&A deals) shutdown for technology companies. And some companies didn’t even have to go public to get liquid. billion.) So what’s left?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Capital is returned to these investors through liquidity events (originally public offerings, but today mostly acquisitions). In contrast, startups operate with speed and urgency, making decisions with incomplete information. They re-envision how an industry can operate and grow, and they focus on better value propositions.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

That if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, could defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. Jeff Decker is a social science researcher at Stanford.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

and reorganized into operating divisions (by product, territory, brand, etc.) This strategy-to-structure shift from functional organizations to operating divisions was led by DuPont and popularized by General Motors and quickly followed by Standard Oil and Sears. Operating divisions execute the known business model.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

All while we’re still writing a Request for a Proposal from within the US Government procurement and acquisition channels. These acquisition and procurement “silos” of excellence are virtually impenetrable by new ideas and requirements. We’re Our Own Worst Enemy. Efficiently Being Inefficient.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Sales (and/or customer acquisition in a multi-sided market) becomes achievable by a sales force (or network effect or virality) without heroic efforts from the founders. Customer acquisition and activation are understood and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Life Time Value (LTV) can be estimated for the next 18 months.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

There was no repeatable methodology, startups and their VC’s still operated like startups were simply a smaller version of a large company. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Startup exits in the next three years will include IPO’s as well as acquisitions.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

Operating Numbers. This plan has three parts: Pivots to your new business model, changes to your operating plan, and what initiatives you save for the recovery. Days 3 and 4: Prepare new business model and operating plan. … Next, plot out the changes to your operating plan. Internal Assessment.

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333