Hacking for Defense (H4D) is designed to provide students the opportunity to learn how to work with defense agencies to better address emerging domestic challenges. Unlike traditional practices that can slow decision making and thwart rapid innovation, this course will provide a proven platform to develop prototypes that meet users’ needs in weeks. Government, nonprofits and other organizations may provide follow-on funding to these student teams for further refinement and development of prototypes.
This class moves fast! Student teams quickly develop an understanding of the problem and a vision of a solution they’d like to build. To be clear: Hacking for Defense is not a product incubator for a specific solution. Instead, it provides teams with a deeper understanding of selected problems and the host of potential solutions that might be arrayed against them. Using the Lean LaunchPad Methodology the class encourages teams to:
This class is inspired by and builds on a class developed by Steve Blank and Pete Newell at Stanford University. You can see more about their approach at http://hacking4defense.stanford.edu/ and is part of the national network of Hacking 4 Defense classes (see https://www.h4di.org/ for more info).
The teaching team is working closely with defense partners to identify and refine challenge statements for the class. As problem statement become available, the site will be updated. Below are the initial challenges that could be available in the class (please note, projects may change without notice and are not guaranteed to be offered):
TBD