I liked how you framed disruption as something that now hits systems, not just sectors. The shift from product advantage to paradigm shift mirrors what we’re seeing in defense too; startups aren’t just building better tools, they’re trying to rebuild the logic of procurement, deterrence, and resilience.
Your point on relevance decay hit especially hard. In reindustrialization, we’re up against the same soft rot: misaligned incentives, language mismatch, and talent flight. Curious how you’d approach keeping a legacy system (like U.S. manufacturing) relevant without falling into the trap of nostalgia-driven innovation.
Exactly. Autonomy without budget authority and „skin in the game“ is just theater with nicer furniture. 😉
Too often, “independent units” end up tethered to the same decision cycles, risk aversion, and procurement logic as the mothership. Real entrepreneurial behavior only emerges when teams can set direction and control capital. Otherwise, the gravity of legacy processes pulls everything back to business as usual. That’s why startups often appear more successful at first—until they start supplying the army and get drawn into the same slow, bureaucratic machinery.
I also want to double down on dual-use as a strategy—especially in defense. Starting in faster-moving private markets lets you iterate, prove value, and build momentum before transitioning to defense. It’s the only viable path unless you’ve got serious political backing and unusually patient capital—which most don’t.
Curious how you’d redesign corporate governance to actually empower venture-style teams. What guardrails would you keep, and what would you strip out?
Dual-use feels less like a strategy and more like a survival requirement at this point. Civilian markets teach speed, and speed teaches relevance. If you're not iterating there first, you're just incubating shelfware. In the US, we saw dual-use have huge success during WW2, and it was largely behind the economic boom we saw during and afterward. It’s a shame that we’ve moved so far away from it now.
On governance: I’d start by stripping out centralized budget authority. Give venture teams their own capital pool and let them allocate it. Keep basic oversight—milestones, security, legal—but kill the line-by-line approvals. You don’t need a steering committee to buy a modem. I’ll be writing a more detailed post about this soon, so stay tuned for that.
I'm not a US defense specialist, but I’ve spent some time working in the industry in Switzerland lately. What struck me most during that period was how remarkably conservative the sector is. It operates as a monolithic system, shaped by cascaded value chains and complex bilateral or set-off contracts.
To be candid, I struggle to see how this logic would hold up in a purely private-sector environment. Perhaps it stems from the nature of state-run agencies, but it feels increasingly disconnected from how modern warfare is actually conducted today.
I don’t have a clear solution—whether it's starting from a green field or enabling smaller, independent units led by people with fresh mindsets to operate outside the established defense industry logic. That alone is difficult. Recruiting people from outside the industry, as I was, is a start—but you're often seen as an outsider and largely ignored.
Unless such a unit is granted full operational autonomy by top-level executives, it risks becoming little more than innovation theater: a few glossy labs using the latest technology, but without any serious impact. This is not just a question of tools—it's about business transformation, logic, and mindset.
Perhaps the most viable path forward is to run as many independent initiatives as possible until something breaks within the old system—triggering the shift toward new approaches.
Steve Blank might offer valuable insights here, given his deep involvement in the US defense ecosystem.
You’re right to zero in on the system logic. Too often, the issue isn’t lack of tech but a refusal to let go of legacy incentives. Your point on innovation theater rings especially true. Plenty of glossy labs, few programs of record.
I wonder if the real lever isn’t just autonomy for independent units, but budget authority. Without full autonomy and separate funding, even "independent" teams end up stuck in orbit of parent organization. It will be interesting to see if Europe and the US can allow for a more decentralized structure that enables that kind of autonomy. It will require cutting through a lot of nostaliga/tradition; in the case of the US, I just hope it doesn’t take a slap in the face for to realize it and make some changes.
I liked how you framed disruption as something that now hits systems, not just sectors. The shift from product advantage to paradigm shift mirrors what we’re seeing in defense too; startups aren’t just building better tools, they’re trying to rebuild the logic of procurement, deterrence, and resilience.
Your point on relevance decay hit especially hard. In reindustrialization, we’re up against the same soft rot: misaligned incentives, language mismatch, and talent flight. Curious how you’d approach keeping a legacy system (like U.S. manufacturing) relevant without falling into the trap of nostalgia-driven innovation.
Exactly. Autonomy without budget authority and „skin in the game“ is just theater with nicer furniture. 😉
Too often, “independent units” end up tethered to the same decision cycles, risk aversion, and procurement logic as the mothership. Real entrepreneurial behavior only emerges when teams can set direction and control capital. Otherwise, the gravity of legacy processes pulls everything back to business as usual. That’s why startups often appear more successful at first—until they start supplying the army and get drawn into the same slow, bureaucratic machinery.
I also want to double down on dual-use as a strategy—especially in defense. Starting in faster-moving private markets lets you iterate, prove value, and build momentum before transitioning to defense. It’s the only viable path unless you’ve got serious political backing and unusually patient capital—which most don’t.
Curious how you’d redesign corporate governance to actually empower venture-style teams. What guardrails would you keep, and what would you strip out?
Completely agree.
Dual-use feels less like a strategy and more like a survival requirement at this point. Civilian markets teach speed, and speed teaches relevance. If you're not iterating there first, you're just incubating shelfware. In the US, we saw dual-use have huge success during WW2, and it was largely behind the economic boom we saw during and afterward. It’s a shame that we’ve moved so far away from it now.
On governance: I’d start by stripping out centralized budget authority. Give venture teams their own capital pool and let them allocate it. Keep basic oversight—milestones, security, legal—but kill the line-by-line approvals. You don’t need a steering committee to buy a modem. I’ll be writing a more detailed post about this soon, so stay tuned for that.
I'm not a US defense specialist, but I’ve spent some time working in the industry in Switzerland lately. What struck me most during that period was how remarkably conservative the sector is. It operates as a monolithic system, shaped by cascaded value chains and complex bilateral or set-off contracts.
To be candid, I struggle to see how this logic would hold up in a purely private-sector environment. Perhaps it stems from the nature of state-run agencies, but it feels increasingly disconnected from how modern warfare is actually conducted today.
I don’t have a clear solution—whether it's starting from a green field or enabling smaller, independent units led by people with fresh mindsets to operate outside the established defense industry logic. That alone is difficult. Recruiting people from outside the industry, as I was, is a start—but you're often seen as an outsider and largely ignored.
Unless such a unit is granted full operational autonomy by top-level executives, it risks becoming little more than innovation theater: a few glossy labs using the latest technology, but without any serious impact. This is not just a question of tools—it's about business transformation, logic, and mindset.
Perhaps the most viable path forward is to run as many independent initiatives as possible until something breaks within the old system—triggering the shift toward new approaches.
Steve Blank might offer valuable insights here, given his deep involvement in the US defense ecosystem.
You’re right to zero in on the system logic. Too often, the issue isn’t lack of tech but a refusal to let go of legacy incentives. Your point on innovation theater rings especially true. Plenty of glossy labs, few programs of record.
I wonder if the real lever isn’t just autonomy for independent units, but budget authority. Without full autonomy and separate funding, even "independent" teams end up stuck in orbit of parent organization. It will be interesting to see if Europe and the US can allow for a more decentralized structure that enables that kind of autonomy. It will require cutting through a lot of nostaliga/tradition; in the case of the US, I just hope it doesn’t take a slap in the face for to realize it and make some changes.