BMNT's Breakout Year

Lots of large, bureaucratic, established organization talk about "being innovative" or "acting like startups". They want to experience the benefit of fast growth, creativity and the ability to quickly respond to unexpected market changes and opportunities. They seek innovative solutions that enable them to outpace existing competition and stay ahead of pesky, disruptive startups. However, most of these organizations fail repeatedly in their attempts to execute on innovation opportunities and programs.

As a former Naval Officer with experience in large corporate, management consulting and startup environments, I've lived the different angles of this challenge for a long time. I believe that finding a systematic approach to solve innovation challenges is a critically important issue for American companies and institutions. While the political environment and financial stability for these organizations is arguably better than it has been since before the Great Recession, money alone will not solve this problem (actually, it may only even make it worse). All startups know how critical cash is, and many (the very unlucky ones) learn how easy access to capital can create more problems than it solves. Corporations have far more discretion on how they use their cash, but they are still subject to financial transparency, (hopefully healthy and measured) regulation and most importantly, their shareholders. Those three factors should keep well-intended, but excessive spending in check. That said, there are time delays between investment and results that can prevent a healthy application of innovation accounting principles (see work from Steve Blank, Erik Ries and David Binetti on this topic) that can drive results in innovation programs. Finally, government entities also are not immune to this same phenomenon. Well intended and carefully evolved practices to manage government spending, can be the very structures that prevent fast application of innovation best practices, and thus impede the mission readiness and execution for the organization.

Finding a systematic way to help organizations solve innovation challenges has become a passion for me and is the primary reason I've begun working with BMNT Partners. BMNT has an incredible team, strong leadership and access to some of the smartest and most successful innovators in the country. The organization thrives on teamwork, collaboration and a real passion for solving the challenges of its clients. And, they have Hacking for X (H4X).

H4X is a disciplined, evidence-based, data-driven process for connecting innovation activities into an accountable system that rapidly delivers solutions to hard problems.

BMNT evolved the H4X from years of innovation activity to address the needs of clients in the Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community (IC). In 2017, the firm showed how the approach is effective in commercial environments as well. If you're serious about getting your organization on a systematic path to innovation success, consider taking a look to see how you might benefit from working with us. Checkout the BMNT Year in Review to learn more about how the approach is different and unique.

BMNT 2017 Year In Review