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Steve Blank How the U.S. Became A Science Superpower
Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. It happened because two very different people were the science advisors to their nation’s leaders. Each had radically different…
Steve Blank How to Flip the Script, Beat China and Russia – And Fix the Broken Department of Defense
A version of this post previously appeared in War on the Rocks. This version has been updated with suggestions from leaders across the Department of Defense and Venture Capital community. BLUF: In WW II, the U.S. outsourced advanced weapons systems development to civilians. The weapons they developed won the war. It’s time to do that…
Steve Blank Quantum Computing – An Update
In March 2022 I wrote a description of the Quantum Technology Ecosystem. I thought this would be a good time to check in on the progress of building a quantum computer and explain more of the basics. Just as a reminder, Quantum technologies are used in three very different and distinct markets: Quantum Computing, Quantum…
Steve Blank How Saboteurs Threaten Innovation–and What to Do About It
This article first appeared in First Round Review. “Only the Paranoid Survive” Andy Grove – Intel CEO 1987-1998 I just had an urgent “can we meet today?” coffee with Rohan, an ex-student. His three-year-old startup had been slapped with a notice of patent infringement from a Fortune 500 company. “My lawyers said defending this suit could…
Steve Blank What Does Product Market Fit Sound Like? This.
I got a call from an ex-student asking me "how do you know when you found product market fit?" There's been lots of words written about it, but no actual recordings of the moment. I remembered I had saved this 90 second, 26 year-old audio file because this is when I knew we had found…
Steve Blank How To Find Your Customer In the Dept of Defense – The Directory of DoD Program Executive Offices
Finding a customer for your product in the Department of Defense is hard: Who should you talk to? How do you get their attention? How do you know if they have money to spend on your product? It almost always starts with a Program Executive Office. The Department of Defense (DoD) no longer owns all…
Steve Blank Security Clearances at the Speed of Startups
Imagine you got a job offer from a company but weren’t allowed to start work – or get paid - for almost a year. And if you can’t pass a security clearance your offer is rescinded. Or you get offered an internship but can’t work on the most interesting part of the project. Sounds like…
Steve Blank Why Large Organizations Struggle With Disruption, and What to Do About It
Seemingly overnight, disruption has allowed challengers to threaten the dominance of companies and government agencies as many of their existing systems have now been leapfrogged. How an organization reacts to this type of disruption determines whether they adapt or die. I’ve been working with a large organization whose very existence is being challenged by an…
Steve Blank Lean LaunchPad @Stanford 2024 – 8 Teams In, 8 Companies Out
This post previously appeared in Poets and Quants. We just finished the 14th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. The class had gotten so popular that in 2021 we started teaching it in both the winter and spring sessions. During the quarter the eight teams spoke to 919 potential customers, beneficiaries and regulators. Most students spent…
Steve Blank Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2024 – Lessons Learned Presentations
We just finished our 9th annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. What a year. Hacking for Defense, now in 60 universities, has teams of students working to understand and help solve national security problems. At Stanford this quarter the 8 teams of 40 students collectively interviewed 968 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners,…
Steve Blank You’re Invited: Hacking for Defense and Lean LaunchPad Final Presentations
Join us for the final presentations of our two Stanford classes this Tuesday June 4th and Wednesday June 5th. Tuesday = Hacking for Defense Wednesday = Lean Launchpad The presentations just get better every year. Attend in person or via Zoom. This year AI seems to be part of almost every team. Zoom link and…
Steve Blank Gordon Bell R.I.P.
Gordon Bell passed on this month. I was a latecomer in Gordon Bell’s life. But he made a lasting impact on mine. The first time I laid eyes on Gordon Bell was in 1984 outside a restaurant in a Boston suburb when he pulled up in a Porsche. I was the head of Marketing for…
Steve Blank The Venture Mindset – Worth A Read
Ilya Strebulaev at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Director of the Stanford Venture Capital Initiative just came out with a book that should be on your reading list – The Venture Mindset. The books premise is that Venture Capitalists (who were responsible for the launch of one-fifth of the 300 largest U.S. public…
Steve Blank Secret History – When Kodak Went to War with Polaroid
This part 2 of the Secret History of Polaroid and Edwin Land. Read part 1 for context. Kodak and Polaroid, the two most famous camera companies of the 20th century, had a great partnership for 20+ years. Then in an inexplicable turnabout Kodak decided to destroy Polaroid’s business. To this day, every story of why…
Steve Blank The Secret History of Polaroid CEO Edwin Land – part 1
The connections between the world of national security and commercial companies still has surprises. December 1976 - Vandenberg Air Force Base, U.S. military space port on the coast of California As a Titan IIID rocket blasted off, it carried a spacecraft on top that would change everything about how intelligence from space was gathered. Heading…
Steve Blank Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
One of the most exciting things a startup CEO in a business-to-business market can hear from a potential customer is, “We’re excited. When can you come back and show us a prototype?” This can be the beginning of a profitable customer relationship or a disappointing sinkhole of wasted time, money, resources, and a demoralized engineering…
Steve Blank Is a $100 Million Enough?
This article first appeared in Inc. Capitalism has been good to me. After serving in the military during Vietnam, I came home and had a career in eight startups. I got to retire when I was 45. Over the last quarter century, in my third career, I helped create the methods entrepreneurs use to build…
Steve Blank Apple Vision Pro – Tech in the Search of a Market
A version of this article previously appeared in Fortune. If you haven’t been paying attention Apple has started shipping its Apple Vision Pro, its take on a headset that combines Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). The product is an amazing technical tour de force. But the product/market fit of this first iteration is…
Steve Blank Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition – 2023 Wrap Up
We just wrapped up the third year of our Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition class –part of Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Joe Felter, Mike Brown and I teach the class to: Give our students an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities for the United States in its enduring strategic competition…
Steve Blank The Department of Defense Is Getting Its Innovation Act Together – But More Can Be Done
This post previously appeared in Defense News and C4SIR. Despite the clear and present danger of threats from China and elsewhere, there’s no agreement on what types of adversaries we’ll face; how we'll fight, organize, and train; and what weapons or systems we'll need for future fights. Instead, developing a new doctrine to deal with these…
Steve Blank The Secret History of Minnesota Part 1: Engineering Research Associates
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you watch the video or read some of the earlier posts for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. Silicon Valley emerged from work in World War II led by Stanford professor Fred Terman developing microwave and electronics for Electronic…
Steve Blank Even the Smartest VCs Sometimes Get it Wrong – Bill Gurley and Regulated Markets
Bill Gurley was one of Silicon Valley’s smartest and most successful VCs. He recently gave a talk at the All-In Summit that was really two talks in one. The first part was railing against the consequences of regulatory capture on innovation and a second part, about the consequences of premature government regulation of AI and…
Steve Blank Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 2
Laura Thomas is a former CIA operations officer. Reading how she moved in 2021 from CIA ops to a quantum technology company offered insightful career transition advice for those leaving her agency. Most of her lessons were applicable to any government employee venturing out to the private sector. Below is the second of her three-part series.…
Steve Blank Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 1
Laura Thomas is a former CIA operations officer. Reading how she moved in 2021 from CIA ops into a quantum technology company offered insightful career transition advice for those leaving her agency. Most of her lessons were applicable to any government employee venturing out to the private sector. Below is the first of her three-part…
Steve Blank Profound Beliefs
This post previously appeared in EIX. In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Think of profound beliefs as “strong opinions loosely held.” You can't be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s…
Steve Blank Before there was Oppenheimer there was Vannevar Bush
I just saw the movie Oppenheimer. A wonderful movie on multiple levels. But the Atomic Bomb story that starts at Los Alamos with Oppenheimer and General Grove misses the fact that from mid-1940 to mid-1942 it was Vannevar Bush (and his number 2, James Conant, the president of Harvard) who ran the U.S. atomic bomb…
Steve Blank Lean Meets Wicked Problems
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…
Steve Blank Reorganizing the DoD to Deter China and Win in the Ukraine – A Road Map for Congress
This article previously appeared in Defense News. It was co-written with Joe Felter, and Pete Newell. Today, the U.S. is supporting a proxy war with Russia while simultaneously attempting to deter a China cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. Both are wakeup calls that victory and deterrence in modern war will be determined by a state’s ability…
Steve Blank Playing With Fire – ChatGPT
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. John F. Kennedy Humans have mastered lots of things that have transformed our lives, created our civilizations, and might ultimately kill us all. This year we’ve invented…
Steve Blank Startups that Have Employees In Offices Grow 3½ Times Faster
This article previously appeared in EIX - Entreprenuers and Innovators Exchange. Data shows that pre-seed and seed startups with employees showing up in a physical office have 3½ times higher revenue growth than those that are solely remote. Let the discussion begin. During the pandemic, companies engaged in one of the largest unintended experiments in…
Steve Blank Is a Venture Studio Right for You?
This post previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Three types of organizations - Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Studios - have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital. Venture Studios are an “idea factory” with their own employees searching for product/market fit and…
Steve Blank Be Where Your Business Is
This post previously appeared on the readwrite blog. A CEO running a B-to-B startup in needs to live in the city where their business is – or else they’ll never scale. I was having breakfast with Erin, an ex-student, just off a red-eye flight from New York. She’s built a 65-person startup selling enterprise…
Steve Blank Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition – 2022 Wrap Up
We just wrapped up the second year of our Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition class - now part of our Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I designed the class to 1) give our students an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities for the United States in its enduring strategic competition…
Steve Blank Why The Pentagon Can’t Count: It’s Time to Reinvent the Audit
This article previously appeared in War on the Rocks. In the past, headlines about the Pentagon failing its financial audit again would never have caught my attention. But having been in the middle of this conversation when I served on one of the Defense Department’s advisory boards, I understand why the Pentagon can't count. The…
Steve Blank The 6th Lean Innovation Educators Summit – Education and Innovation in the Age of Chaos and Disruption
Join Jerry Engel, Pete Newell, and Steve Weinstein for the sixth edition of the Lean Innovation Educators Summit December 14, 1-4 pm Eastern Time, 10 am-1 pm Pacific Time. Register here. --- This virtual gathering will bring together entrepreneurship educators from around the world who are putting Lean Innovation to work in their classrooms, accelerators,…
Steve Blank The Three Pillars of World-class Corporate Innovation
My good friend Alexander Osterwalder, the inventor of the business model canvas (one of foundations of the Lean Methodology) has written a playbook (along with his associate partner Tendayi Viki,) From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine to explain how to build and implement repeatable innovation processes inside a company. Here's their introduction to the key concepts inside the…
Steve Blank A Simple Map for Innovation at Scale
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…
Steve Blank Mapping the Unknown – The Ten Steps to Map Any Industry
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step Lǎozi 老子 I just had lunch with Shenwei, one of my ex-students who had just taken a job in a mid-sized consulting firm. After a bit of catching up I offered he was looking a bit lost. “I just got handed a project to…
Steve Blank National Industrial Policy – Private Capital and The America’s Frontier Fund Steps Up
This article previously appeared in The National Interest. Last month the U.S. passed the CHIPS and Science Act, one of the first pieces of national industrial policy – government planning and intervention in a specific industry -- in the last 50 years, in this case for semiconductors. After the celebratory champagne has been drunk and…
Steve Blank Finding and Growing the Islands of Innovation inside a large company – Action Plan for A New CTO
This post previously appeared in Fast Company. How does a newly hired Chief Technology Officer (CTO) find and grow the islands of innovation inside a large company? How not to waste your first six months as a new CTO thinking you’re making progress when the status quo is working to keep you at bay? I…