Jane Edwards
The Defense Innovation Board has issued a survey to solicit insights from investment firms and businesses on how to boost partnerships with private companies to drive growth in critical technology areas, Defense News reported Wednesday.
The survey issued by DIB’s strategic investment capital task force on Wednesday seeks to generate feedback from companies about the challenges faced by non-traditional contractors in doing business with the Department of Defense.
“We really need to talk to people outside the department,” Will Roper, a DIB member and chair of the task force, said at the board’s meeting Wednesday.
“It’s not just startups, which you would guess we would do. We really need to speak with investors. We also need to speak with defense companies that have been working with us for decades about how they view working with companies that have a different track record than just being part of the defense industrial base,” added Roper, former U.S. Air Force acquisition chief and a three-time Wash100 Award winner.
According to the report, the survey is expected to inform a larger study that intends to look at how DOD can better direct private investments toward tech areas that are key to national security, such as semiconductors, hypersonics, biotechnology and directed energy.
Heidi Shyu, DOD undersecretary for research and engineering and an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s 2023 Wash100, ordered the study through a Dec. 15 memo, which was issued weeks after the Pentagon established the office of strategic capital to address investment gaps in critical technologies.
