Episode 1: Tech Tuesday with SOFWERX
Got disruptive technology for the warfighters? Listen to this episode to learn how to get your tech in front of USSOCOM and more than a dozen agencies (U.S. and FVEYs). Head over to sofwerx.org/techtuesday to apply to be a part of the Tech Tuesday program!
About Tech Tuesday
- Tambrein Bates, Director of SOFWERX. He served in the Army for 25 years and 20 of those were in special operations from operator to research and development roles in classified programs. He and his team are responsible for creating a platform for accelerating delivery of innovative capabilities to the warfighter.
- Tech Tuesday is a forum to engage industries and provide them a venue to pitch their unique transformational levels of technology in both academia and government.
- it is a venue that allows those innovators in the government that are interested in transformational technology a way for them to come in and hear deliberately from people that have transformational levels of technology to offer.
-Tech Tuesday is really relatively new. With less than 300 government participants.
Levels of Innovation
-There are three levels of innovation: 1) Incremental, 2) Adjacent, and 3) Transformational. Tech Tuesday is a forum designed to specifically identify and discover Transformational levels of technology.
- Incremental innovation involves new, improved, refined, or “incrementally better” products or services; Adjacent innovation involves expansion to an adjacent business or customer arrangement, attracting new customers in the market; Transformational Innovation involves the creation of entirely new business and is considered the most high-style of innovation.
Qualification for Funding
It is transformational and goes through a little bit of a cut with the process as follows:
· There's a small panel that convenes and we’ll assess the company’s technology or interface and see if it's truly transformational.
· Once selected, companies create their sketch.
· A few general questions are thrown to the business 1) What is transformational about your tech? 2) How can your technology be transformational? 3) How can your technology be used by the warfighter?
Qualification for Partnership
Tech Tuesday primarily exposes the government to interesting and provocative technologies. And businesses or companies need to have a minimum viable product, there needs to be something that they have built that can demonstrate capability.
Reaching the Bandwith Point
- Tech Tuesday can take on more and they believe it's always a balancing act. It’s a balance between technology and government. Tech Tuesday is growing slowly but doing a good job. Execution is more important than anything else and the team's executed very well.
What Happens to Non Transformational Companies
- SOFWERX sends those products/services to potential government partners who are interested.
- Planning to put together a repository like Vulcan that the government uses. So at least these companies are still searchable and people can find them later on.
- Vulcan is a repository which is used by the US Special Operations Command. Any company can submit their info into the system, and then the government can come and search for any information about the company. It is a portal for all company information.
If you have transformational technology and want to know what Tech Tuesday can do for your business, visit their website at https://www.sofwerx.org/
