About IDE
The United States military is losing the innovation battle
Entrepreneurial Innovation (Ei) is when new industries replace old industries and is the foundation for the U.S. economic competitive advantage. This can easily be seen in commercial markets – Uber, Google, and Apple are all examples of Ei and how an entrepreneur can succeed and disrupt a market with an original innovative idea. The Innovation Spirals show how an entrepreneur views the opportunities in commercial and Department of Defense (DoD) markets.
Right now, the United States is losing its technological superiority. Countries like China and Russia are quickly closing the gap. We are slowing due to the lack of Ei in the national security market. The DoD has programs to entice entrepreneurs to enter their marketplace, like the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Program, but they only take the innovation so far.
The DoD socializes and co-opts the entrepreneurs’ innovation with their legacy systems. They think that they can develop and commercialize the innovation themselves. Due to the bureaucracy within the DoD, that is not the case. The DoD ends up disrupting the entrepreneur rather than the market, the labs take longer to develop the technology, and by the time the innovation is ready for implementation, the technology is obsolete. This causes the entrepreneur to abandon the DoD market and deters her from entering it again – it is known as the Death Spiral.
The U.S. is the land of opportunity. Entrepreneurs are special in the fact that they can perfect and scale their ideas and innovations into successful advancements in a market. Without Ei, the U.S. DoD will have “legacy systems irrelevant to the defense” of its people (2018 National Defense Strategy). The fact that the DoD desperately wants and needs Ei in their market but is unwilling to accept the methodology has to be changed.
Our Mission
IDE helps shape public policy for entrepreneurs to enter the national security market without the threat of the DoD socializing their innovations.
This allows disruption in the market in order to help make the US the global leader in technological superiority once again.
We work with entrepreneurs and policy leaders to understand current challenges and reach creative solutions.
Illana N Hodges
Director of Entrepreneurial Innovation
Illana grew up outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana. She graduated from Indiana University with a B.S in Physics. She then moved to Chicago, Illinois to pursue life in a larger city. There, she worked at the Adler Planetarium, teaching the public about astronomy and astrophysics. She moved on to work at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Microphysics Laboratory as a researcher in infrared semiconductor technology. There, she met a professor who hired her to work at his private laboratory as an engineer. She was exposed to the SBIR program and how entrepreneurs interact with the DoD. Due to the “death spiral,” and only ever receiving Phase I and II grants and contracts, she decided to go back to school to help shape science policy. She graduated from DePaul University with a Master of Public Policy (MPP) in 2019 and moved to Washington, D.C. to help with this endeavor as the Director of Entrepreneurial Innovation at Innovative Defense Enterprises (IDE).