ARMY AL&T
“I realized I already had a class, so we didn't have to create one from scratch,” Blank said. Te difference was that in I-Corps the students brought their own prob- lems to work on. In Hacking for Defense, DOD and the intelligence community would need to supply a list of problems that teams of students would pick from. So that was one challenge. What’s more, Blank was worried about how the class would be received at Stanford, where in the 1960s violent anti-Vietnam War protests forced the university to end all classified research.
“My worry was that we would throw a party and no guests would show up, or we’d throw a party and the guests would show up but not the caterer,” he said.
Everyone ended up making the party, and then some. As Hacking for Defense developed and spread to other univer- sities, several truths began to emerge. Among them, Blank said, “is that you could quickly immerse non-military folks deeply into problem understanding, and then have them rapidly test different solu- tions. At the same time taking the sponsor for the ride, because almost always what we've discovered is the problem that is given is almost always a symptom of some other problem.”
“We thought we would teach the govern- ment how to better deliver problems and
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
Members of Team 21st Century Frogman—from left, Andrew Sparks, Gerardo Rendon, Kelsey Schroeder and Priyanka Sekhar—took part in some aspects of Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition training at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California, during their Hacking for Defense class at Stanford in spring 2017. Their problem was to create an algorithm and dashboard to predict safety risks and streamline real-time data entry during SEAL basic training. (Photo by Team 21st Century Frogman)
create a dialogue that was worthwhile,” Newell said. “We thought that the entre- preneurship component of the course would get students excited about learning build a company from an idea. Tis is real world and it's real experience working with real people.”
Buy-in from the government side—and at a high level—was critical. “If there's a challenge in scaling the course it has
been retaining the discipline around the problems,” said Newell. “Tere has to be a real problem, there has to be the prob- lem owner and there has to be somebody who's energized and passionate about solv- ing the problem. Tere has to be a senior leader champion that has the resources and the authority to do something about it. It has to be important to the organization that is vested in the work being done by the class.”
“I was kind of confused as to why the military wanted a team of Georgetown students, none of whom had any military experience, to help solve a problem. I assumed that there was an Easy Button behind the scenes that the military could click anytime there was a problem. … It became pretty clear early on that that was not the case.”
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