What the Heck is an Army Cohort?
In this session, companies that have participated in AAL cohorts will take the stage alongside Army leaders and PMs to talk about how the Cohort Program works, why it works, and what it will take to scale this novel approach to solution innovation across a million-person organization.
What you’ll learn
- What is an Army cohort?(05:22)
- How the Army cohort compares to other innovation experiences with the Army or in private industry? (10:01)
- How is AAL using lessons learned from the past to make contracting smoother and easier in the future?(21:00)
- What is AFC’s role in PPMx at the tactical level? (25:28)
- What a company needs to be prepared for when they come onto an Army cohort (28:43)
- When and how do you leverage this cohort model (32:00)
Key quotes
“One of the things that we do with the Cohort is focus on getting that speed of innovation down to the end user. So we have, by design, end user development technologies. That’s one of the great things that AAL does.” — Jim Templin, AAL
“You know, we never really had access through these civil related programs and you know, kudos to you all that we get so much access to them that we have a much better understanding of what the problem solution space is and how to, you know, adapt our solution to help them meet their requirements or needs.” — Sudipto Ghoshal, Qualtech Systems Inc.
“That’s a big difference I’ve seen is the willingness to collaborate and build the pieces of parts of the solution from the program. It’s different than what I’ve seen in the past.” — Christopher Orlowski, US Army PEO Ground Combat Systems
“by colliding all these different organizations together in these communities of action, we open the aperture of what is possible in terms of a solution, because the different aspects of the problem become very apparent when you talk to an end user about how they experience the problem, and there’s different ways to go about solving it.” — Jim Templin, AAL
“You ask a lot of people a question — you’re not necessarily going to have answers that fall on top of each other, right? You have various stakeholders with different needs and stuff. And so there was a little bit of work and sort of, I don’t want to say triangulating, but understanding that all of those answers were right and valid. But it wasn’t a nice, clean, crisp box that that sometimes comes out of that.” — Guy Babbitt, Czero Inc.
Who you’ll hear from
Jim Templin, AAL, Project Manager
James Ackermann, LRPF CFT, HQE
Guy Babbitt, Czero Inc., CEO
Christopher Orlowski, US Army PEO Ground Combat Systems, Product Manager
Sudipto Ghoshal, Qualtech Systems Inc., Chief Operating Officer
About Fed Supernova
Fed Supernova is a three-day annual conference highlighting defense innovation in Texas. This first-of-its-kind interactive experience draws national attention and connects leading entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders, corporations, and decision makers from around the world.About Capital Factory
Capital Factory is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas, the number one startup state in the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, programmers and designers gather day and night, in-person and online for meetups, classes and coworking. With boots on the ground in Austin, Dallas and Houston, we meet the best entrepreneurs in Texas and introduce them to their first investors, employees, mentors and customers. According to Pitchbook, Capital Factory has been the most active investor in Texas since 2013.
