Overview
Hacking for Defense (H4D) is a university course co-created by Steve Blank, joe-felter, and Pete Newell, launched at Stanford in 2016 by tom-byers and his team at Stanford. It applies Lean Innovation methods to real national security challenges, with students working on problems provided by innovators inside the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
How It Works
H4D uses the same pedagogical approach as the Lean LaunchPad — students apply the Mission Model Canvas (an adaptation of the Business Model Canvas for mission-driven organizations) and Customer Development to validate solutions to real-world problems — in the national security domain. Students work with DoD and IC sponsors who have real operational problems, conducting customer discovery within the defense establishment.
Adoption
The Department of Defense adopted and scaled the program. As of recent counts, H4D is taught at approximately 70 universities. Related programs include:
Significance
H4D completes a circle in Blank's career: from military electronic warfare (1972-1976) through Silicon Valley startups (1978-1999) through entrepreneurship education (2001-present) to applying startup methodology to national security problems. It demonstrates that Customer Development's core insight — hypotheses must be tested against reality — applies to government and defense as much as to commercial startups.
Sources: steveblank.com, Stanford Review, Gordian Knot Center, Wikipedia