Board of Advisors 2021 Task Force Report Introduction
Peter A. Newell
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors
Bio | LinkedIn
Col. Pete Newell (Ret.) is the CEO of BMNT, an innovation consultancy and early-stage technology incubator that helps solve some of the hardest problems facing the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. Prior to joining BMNT, Pete served as the Director of the US Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF). Reporting directly to the senior leadership of the Army, he was charged with rapidly finding, integrating, and employing solutions to emerging problems faced by Soldiers on the battlefield. Pete’s experiences with the REF are the subject of case studies used in the classrooms at both the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School. As CEO of BMNT, Inc. he brings together innovators working at the intersection of business, government, academia, and society. He is also a co-founder of the Common Mission Project.
One thing we can say with certainty about the world today: It’s constantly changing. In world powers, politics and alliances; technology and security; energy resources and requirements; healthcare capacity and priorities; the climate and environment; in natural disasters and humanitarian crises, change reigns. We live in a state of perpetual flux that has historically kept mankind reacting to survive. Rapid innovation, strategic partnership, purposeful risk taking, broad engagement and inclusive empowerment offer ways to improve the status quo.
At the Common Mission Project, we began the “Hacking For” series of academic programs as a way to kickstart collaboration and innovation across the government, the private sector and academia to confront the threat of inertia head on. This series of classes -- Hacking for Defense, Hacking for Oceans, Hacking for Diplomacy, and others -- teach students how to use modern innovation tools to address critical real-world issues at speed. Our mission from the start has been to keep those most directly linked to critical problem sets at center stage, and let their narrative be the driving force for a collaborative effort among the best and brightest students with the support of seasoned leaders within academia, defense, and the private sector. It’s an equation that works. The “Hacking For” classes draw students from a wide range of educational disciplines, from technology to healthcare to law, and have resulted in new startups that are developing solutions for real challenges and inspired a new generation of bright students to careers in public service.
Delivering a solution to stagnation is a popular concept, it turns out, especially among a community of progressive innovators, risk takers, game-changers and visionaries. The “Hacking For” programs have drawn so many like-minded people who believe in our mission and our potential, that we can claim a thriving and diverse Board of Advisors who help guide and grow our incredibly important work to tackle more of the world’s greatest concerns, one problem at a time. Our Board, comprising leaders across defense, academia, successful corporations, and proven small innovators, bring wide, compelling backgrounds, but they also share key common values. They each believe that our country and its allies can and must innovate now; they hold the knowledge of how to get us there; and each nurtures a solid belief that the “Hacking For” program is an unmistakably significant component to that success.
This report, collectively authored by our Board of Advisors, highlights the very deep and meaningful values that drove us to introduce this concept in the first place, to keep the free world on the cutting edge of advanced technologies, and to ensure that the most threatening challenges facing our generation are taken on proactively, strategically, and efficiently.
Together we have an opportunity to grow and meet change head on, for the good of all. Areas outlined in the report are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to just how we can grow. They include: collaboration between the public and private sectors; increasing diversity, equity and inclusivity; raising training standards to reward critical thinking and allow for risk taking; improving interactivity between public service and academia; and breathing fresh life and external perspectives into stagnant defense acquisition processes.
I hope you’ll take a moment to read their perspectives.