Leaning Into
The Lean Startup

Adjunct professor at Stanford University and Senior Fellow of Innovation at Columbia University Steve Blank, known as the father of modern entrepreneurship for conceptualizing the philosophy of The Lean Startup, and retired US Army colonel and international innovation expert Peter Newell discuss their work together helping governments and corporations adopt a lean approach to create, innovate, and drive growth.
With vastly different professional histories, the unlikely pairing of Steve and Peter has created an innovative approach to business, tech, and even governance and diplomacy. This unexpected partnership discusses modern entrepreneurship as well as the components of calculated innovation in order to apply a lean approach on any level or industry.

Meet our guests:

Pete Newell is a nationally recognized innovation expert whose work is transforming how the government and other large organizations compete and drive growth.

A retired Army Colonel and former director of the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, he is the CEO of BMNT Inc., an internationally recognized innovation consultancy and early-stage enterprise accelerator that helps solve some of the hardest real-world problems in national security, state and local governments, and beyond.

BMNT uses a framework, called H4X®, to drive innovation at speed. H4X® is an adaptation of the problem curation techniques honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the best practices employed by successful Silicon Valley startups. The result is a disciplined, evidence-based, data-driven process for connecting innovation activities into an accountable system that delivers solutions and overcome obstacles to innovation.

Together with Lean Startup founder Steve Blank and Joe Felter, the retired Army Colonel and former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia; Pete is also founder and co-author of Hacking for Defense (H4D)®, an academic program taught at 50+ universities in the U.S., as the UK and Australia, that has created a national security innovation pipeline as it solves critical national security problems at startup speed.

Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.
Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual which revolutionized how startups were built– and his Harvard Business Review cover story redefined how large companies can innovate at speed.
Steve is a founding faculty member of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford, where his latest class is Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition, is providing crucial insight on how technology will shape all the elements of national power (our influence and footprint on the world stage).