Building Strategic Partnerships to Scale Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship

The critical challenges facing the world today  — from national security to natural disasters, from energy to the environment — all have common elements. They are constantly evolving; they cut across government, private, and non-profit sectors; and they require a problem-based approach to ensure solutions are relevant, grounded, and implementable in the real world.  But the most important way in which the challenges we face today are alike? They affect every one of us.  

‍

BMNT is working to create a global network of individuals to solve these challenges. In 2019, we established The Common Mission Project (CMP), an international non-profit platform for empowering mission-driven entrepreneurs. Through this, we’ve begun to establish strategic partnerships across the globe to help us engage a broader ecosystem to solve the world’s most critical problems.

‍

Last year, CMP partnered with Lockheed Martin Ventures to bolster our flagship Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship program, Hacking for Defense® — an innovation capability taught at over 30 universities across the U.S. and delivered in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN). Our strategic partnership with LMV is enhancing the experience and insights achieved by H4D students by enabling deeper discovery and prototyping of H4D solutions — thereby increasing solutions adopted within the DoD and building the National Security Innovation Base.

‍

Also in 2019, the United Kingdom held its first two Hacking for the Ministry of Defence (H4MoD) courses in partnership with the UK Ministry of Defence, King’s College London, and Imperial College London. In these courses, students worked with MoD to rapidly addressing specific problems related to emerging threats and security challenges. Given the success of these courses, H4MoD is expanding to partner with five new UK universities, closing 2020 with seven offerings. H4MoD has been recognized in the UK as a cutting-edge academic program that empowers students solve tough national security problems. The class was selected as the flagship course for the UK Defence Academy’s newly launched “Advance Vocational Stream” pathway for Lieutenant Colonels. 

‍

Our “hacking for” capability has also expanded its reach to enlist problem-solvers in new areas. Hacking4Local (H4L) launched in 2019 and we will pilot Hacking4Oceans (H4O) this year in partnership with leading public and private organizations to solve other kinds of real-world challenges.

‍

In expanding The Common Mission Project through strategic partnerships, we have learned that mission-driven entrepreneurship programs are not only changing how we think about solving the critical challenges of our time; it is also challenging who see themselves as problem-solvers. 

‍

Learn more at CommonMission.us and H4D.us.