The Mouse and the Hippo: How the US Government tries to tap in to America's innovation ecosystem

The stories of how the largest buyer of goods and services in America - the US Government - does (or more often, doesn't) have access to America's freshest new ideas are enough to fill many thumb drives. I call the problem, "the mouse and the hippo dancing with each other." It usually ends badly for the mouse (and I talk about this quite a lot in my new book: Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development, Brookings Institution Press). That is not to say that there aren't many attempts by the USG to fix this. One interesting, recent one is that of the Department of Defense under Secretary Ash Carter who is trying to fix the Pentagon's "window on innovation" program in Silicon Valley (and soon Boston as well). In this program, Defense Innovation Unit Experimental or DIUx, the Pentagon is trying to "walk like a duck" and at least be part of - if not joining - the conversation about innovation.

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