Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. 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 has led one heck of an interesting life. He’s had three careers: First, in the U.S. Air Force for four years during the Vietnam War. Next, as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in 8 startups in two decades (with four IPOs).
Steve is widely recognized as a thought leader on startups and innovation. Named to the Thinkers50 list of top management thinkers and recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of 12 Masters of Innovation, Steve is also Senior Fellow for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University. His Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class is taught in more than 100 universities around the globe. More than 300,000 people have signed up for a free version of the class, offered through Udacity.com.
His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency. The class launched a movement in mission-driven entrepreneurship, with sister classes like Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Climate and Sustainability, Hacking for Cities, and Hacking for Recovery - all teaching students to solve real-world challenges at startup speed. Steve’s his latest class at Stanford, Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition, is providing crucial insight on how technology will shape all the elements of national power.
His talk “The Secret History of Silicon Valley” has become the standard history of why entrepreneurship blossomed in Silicon Valley while stillborn elsewhere. It has made him an unofficial expert and frequent speaker on the rise of entrepreneurial clusters as well as the role of the US government and military’s influence on entrepreneurship.
From 2006-2013 Steve served as a public official in California as Commissioner on the California Coastal Commission, the public body that regulates land use and public access on the California coast. He is on the board of the California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV); is a past board member of Audubon California, the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust (POST); and was a trustee of U.C. Santa Cruz.
Watch Steve Blank in action
