SOLVING THE PUZZLE Steve Blank, a retired Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and a lecturer at the business schools of Stanford University and the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, introduced then-Col. Peter Newell to his “Lean Launch- Pad” methods: Identify the problem, validate it with end users and then test possible solutions. The two men realized that Newell had been doing essentially the same thing with the REF. When Newell retired from the Army and joined BMNT, he and Blank got to work refining the approach to solve U.S. military challenges with help from Silicon Valley. (Image by U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center (USAASC))
