Jane Edwards
Draper has launched a partnership platform designed to help small businesses and startups collaborate with the government to facilitate rapid prototyping of emerging technology platforms in support of defense and national security missions.
DraperSPARX – to be led by C. Colin Supko, director of market intelligence at Draper – will work to bring together industry leaders and startups to accelerate the development and deployment of defense technologies, the engineering innovation company said Monday.
The platform will also provide tech companies with technical and business expertise and access to a collaborative digital environment and secure facilities to promote innovation in the defense sector.
Supko will report to Jennifer Santos, vice president and chief strategy officer at Draper, as he leads the new partnership platform in Reston, Virginia. He is a corporate executive, a Navy Reserve captain and a former White House Presidential Innovation Fellow.
“Startups and small businesses are innovation engines that need champions, both capital and resource, to nurture, mature and commercialize emergent technologies to make them available to defense sector and government customers. DraperSPARX can be that champion,” Supko said.
