A ‘Lean’ Fighting Machine

Steve Blank, Stanford University

Stanford Adjunct Professor Steve Blank explains how the terrorist tactics American troops faced in Afghanistan prompted the Army to create a special unit tasked with searching for solutions in private industry and rapidly acquiring and deploying them on the battlefield. Blank, creator of the Lean LaunchPad methodology, says the idea was the impetus for his course “Hacking for Defense: Solving National Security Issues with the Lean LaunchPad.”