World Innovation Network (WIN) stands humbled as both the world’s preeminent innovation ignition and tactical technology think tank. Plus, as the leading 501(c)(3), non-profit, non-partisan scientific strategy skunkworks, WIN also enjoys being honored as an internationally credentialed non-governmental organization (NGO). Since its 1989 launch, WIN represents the sole such organization inspiring international innovation in the deep-tech-triad of Outer-Space, Cyber-Space, and Neuro-Space (AI + Robotic + Brain Science).
WIN proudly deploys its battle-hardened SOLUTIONneering™ Formula, its own painstakingly produced proprietary methodology. While rooted-in-rigor, the innovation-infusing, problem-pouncing, silo-smashing, bias-blitzing, obsolescence-avoiding, chaos-conquering, and future-forecasting SOLUTIONneering™ roadmap destructively diminishes and disrupts detrimentally deleterious #DeEvolution. This allows WIN to successfully execute challenging #MissionsThatMatter by not just “connecting-the-dots,’ but to deploy true diversity by more critically #ConnectingTheThoughts.
To defend our country and its people, enterprises, and allies, WIN masterfully matches the world’s #MarketsToMakers by #SwitchingThePitch. This 180-degree flip from the faulty traditional “build it and they might come” myth pervasive in both entrepreneurial and corporate “innovation” allows WIN to successfully solve the toughest and roughest problems…with the strongest and smartest innovators.
Above all, WIN remains obsessively and unapologetically laser-focused on protecting individuals and enterprises from even the earliest infectious signs and symptoms of organization-killing scourges infecting economies, societies, and cultures. These plagues include creativity-chasms, catatonic-complacency, cognitive-collapse, chaotic-catastrophes, innovation-insolvency, de-evolutionary-despair, start-up-non-starters, paradigm-paradoxes, unagile-agility, and, most dangerous, idea-idiocracy. By safeguarding innovation, the World Innovation Network, in turn, protects and preserves our homeland, our health, and ultimately…. our freedom.
Robert S. Katz, real rocket scientist by day and firefighter-paramedic rescue-diver by night, remains probably the most influential innovation inventor, technology tactician, and solution strategist you may have never heard of. Working for decades quietly behind the scenes throughout the Defense and Intelligence Communities, his game-changing and gestalt-shifting breakthroughs of yesterday can mistakenly be taken for granted as ubiquitously omnipresent today. Groundbreaking examples of his global mobile systems include the first platforms for cyber defending, email messaging, aircraft tracking, video conferencing, personnel geolocating, and performance monitoring. An early evangelist for cyber protection, Robert proudly pioneered programs for cyber orchestrating, search-and-rescuing, climate mapping, Space Telescope imaging, and the universe’s first autonomous vehicle navigating. He led architecture and capture on multiple billion-dollar cyber contracts to construct capacity, resiliency, and protection for the entire U.S. Executive Branch, especially within the Pentagon, NSA, CIA, FBI, NGA, DEA, DHS, and USCYBERCOM, as well as for top enterprise brands and multinational corporations.
Robert intricately integrates his multi-disciplinary methodologies by fusing his three full undergraduate majors in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science together with his Minor in Chemistry. He further adds his Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering doctorial research in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision, which he had the foresight to conduct as far back as 1988. Finally, he tops off his fused frameworks with his foci into Cosmology and the Philosophy of Science.
Besides his nachas bragging on his cherished children, Robert likewise boasts incessantly about his service as an MIT foot soldier in the Regan Revolution. His leadership in the Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, presciently Iron Dome’s grandfather, blazed the trail to establish today’s field of cybersecurity. Ultimately, his Star Wars securing of cyberspace patriotically helped “tear down this wall,” conquered the dark side, triumphed in the Cold War, and liberated 300 million from torturous totalitarianism and crooked communism…without firing a shot.
Cyber Innovation Nation
Cyber Innovation Nation proudly unveils Bubbe’s revered recipe for Israel’s secret sauce of cyber success. First, combine heavy helpings of superiorly smart students, successive scoops of innumerably inspired immigrants, copious cups of compulsory country conscription, plentiful pinches of creatively compelling coopetition, and generous chunks of old-fashioned fearless chutzpah. Next, bake in the necessity as the mother of invention. Finally, enjoy a plentiful potpourri of pervasive protective innovations against the sinister cyber world…seen through Israel’s eyes.
Digital DeEvolution
Digital DeEvolution examines the good, the bad, and the ugly of today’s explosion in on-line connectivity. Since the first touch screen cave drawings, the first virtual reality ram’s horn blowing, and the first wireless smoke signals, emerging communication techniques, tools, tactics, and tricks have consistently helped humankind evolve into faster, better, stronger, and smarter creatures. Notwithstanding this exciting progress in so many areas, where lies the guarantee that it must necessarily continue? Are these so-called advancements really advancing us?
However, while on-line hyper-connectivity held the promise to initiate, facilitate, and perpetuate heightened off-line connectivity, the very opposite has been realized. This was merely an unintended consequence of social media, or was it? Paradoxically, the more connected we
become, the more dis-connected we become. Nowhere does this present a more cataclysmic clear-and-present-danger than in the critical development of our precious youth. In the choice of communication between man-and-machine, the winner yields no long-term prize for our kids.
No surprise that our upcoming generation of new adults have replaced robust resiliency with frightening fragility. Even the mere questionable look in an “unsafe” space can trigger trauma. Although we are seeking diversity in adults, children, and tots, we shun such diversity in thoughts. The self-selecting homogeneity of social media feeds leaves us ill prepared for any true diversity. This did not have to necessarily happen. We have had countless tectonic communications shifts in human development. From the tablets of Apple back to the tablets of Moses, revolutions in printing, telephones, and email all created shifts of biblical proportions in human interaction. Then why does social media stand alone as the major destructor of these disruptors? More importantly, are we too late to disrupt our digital demolition.
What is our future? Digital DeEvolution investigates if we are marching toward a delightfully dynamic digital Disneyland or despondently dystopian digital de-evolution?
Next, the specific steps will be dissected. The launch is initiated by engaging with the markets. The markets are part of the five main players in the innovation landscape. Those five players are the markets, the makers, the minds, the money, and the movers. The convergence is king. Begin launching the challenge by engaging with the most important player, which is the corporates and governments representing the markets. The market element could be a corporate multinational corporation (MNC) that might be responding to a need of a particular partner. The need could be from a request for proposal (RFP) or a tender being issued by a government or a commercial entity. Also, the need could be one that is developed from a conference or an expo, or could be one of the many, many existing challenges which are already being brought to the innovation community through formal and informal challenge and prize platforms.
Next. these needs, wants, and desires are distilled into pain points. These pain points go through a rigorous, the rigorous SOLUTIONneering™ process, specifically the SOLUTIONsolving™ methodology, which dissects, decomposes, and deconstructs the specific elements of the problem, whether it be strategic or tactical. This readies the problem to be moved to the next step of the process. The next part of the process, before the challenge is even issued, is SOLUTIONstorming™. This brings a first cut at the problem through the Blockchain-of-Brains™ using the Brains-Without-Borders paradigm, which is a national brain-trust of networked subject matter experts (SMEs) that further define, characterize, decompose, deconstruct, and prioritize the problem. Now ready to issue the challenge. This is optimally issued via a hackathon type environment where all of the ecosystem and community players converge and collaborate interactively for a focused period of time with the benefit of the challenge producers, the corporates and/or government, being interactively involved. This will allow for not just an accelerated understanding of the problem, but the accelerated solving of the problem. A hackathon like environment with the individuals and the startups coming together allows for a true mash up to create new or evolved constructs of teams. Now, the challenge is issued, the solvers and the community begins working on the challenge.
The challenge is issued to all the participants attending, which are representatives from both the makers and the minds. The makers consist of existing startups, or would startups wanting to be startups, as well as existing established companies, which may not be yet startups. These may be more appropriately called scale-ups. Also, in the category of makers could be teams from universities. These groups of minds contain individual contributors, innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, and SMEs, as well as individuals from various national and federal and private and university laboratories. There will also be entities from technology transfer offices (TTOs). Technology transfer is very important to potentially accelerate the development of solutions by leveraging existing research and productization that has been completed or even just simply innovations or patents that have been produced by various entities like national and federal laboratories or universities that are seeking the opportunities of commercialization.
In this case, they will most likely not be deployed solely alone to solve the problem, although may be possible. Instead, more likely they will be used to augment and supplement a technology that the makers propose as the makers and the minds are working together. The makers will be pulling from the solution sourcing system. The solution sourcing system consists of extensively indexed and researched resources to assist in the solution creation process. This solution source consists of a database with extensive regional, national, and global directories of engineers, developers, and inventions as part of usually technology transfer or subject matter experts and advisors, other startups, as well as requests for grants and prizes. The corporate should be checked against some of the global requests in the challenge databases to ensure the ability for collaboration as the maker is developing the product. It will be collaborating with the fourth part of the SOLUTIONneering suite, which is the solutions scaling framework. The solution scaling framework is a done for you back office in front of the office infrastructure platform that brings together experts, outsourced and virtual members of the management team to aid in the acceleration of the building of the corporation. Along with the solution scaling framework, there are business building experts and innovative makers who can focus on the technical development aspects of building the product or service.
The third or fourth player in the challenge is the money, not just from traditional investors or angels, but also money from contracts, challenges, grants, and prizes that may be able to be garnered throughout the development cycle. By aligning this activity with one of the challenge requests, there is also the opportunity to engage with a corporate and secure a letter of interest (LOI) that would express the willingness to consider, not necessarily bound by or obligated to, but to consider a purchase at a time when the when the startup readies product. Having this LOI in hand ahead of time would significantly accelerate the startups acquisition of equity funding over and with traditional routes. The letter proves that this is a significantly de-risked company.
Further, the letter of interest may even provide opportunities for non-traditional, debt-based funding, possibly non-diluted funding, in addition to the traditional VC and angel routes. The last part of the money opportunity could be contracts, which through the various tenders and RFPs might be available to the start-up. Lastly, the makers, with the help of the solutions scaling system, can identify the perfect deployment partners. These partners are critical to help the maker scale quickly and be able to not just secure the interest of the corporate or government, but more importantly can execute in rolling out quickly. The partners will provide distribution and support, principally for the corporate customer. They include traditional and non-traditional partners with product distribution channels and distributors, as well as value added resellers (VARs).
Other distributors may be independent software vendors (ISVs) and systems integrators (SIs). These could be excellent delivery teams and support teams. They already serve in these capacities for other entities.
Lastly, once the movers are ready, time to deliver the product or service to the channel and then finally the delivery to the market of the market driven laser-focused channel optimized product or service. The startup is now offering to the markets.
This simple approach remains superior to the current non-sustainable and inequitable method of startup product creation. Bringing the markets to the makers ensure much higher success than idea generation in a vacuum.
Cradle
Clarity
Capital
Culture
Climate
Counsel
Capacity
Coaching
Contracts
Community
Compliance
Competition
Connections
Cybersecurity
Creating-Value
Crafting-Models
Career-Sourcing
Client-Acquisition
Conducting-Trials
Commercialization