Government innovation… is that really a thing?

Sean Singleton, broker dealer at Franklin Templeton Investments, had a lot to share around this on this episode.

He told us that Secretary Carter was the first sitting Secretary of Defense to make his way into Silicon Valley in over a generation. Carter quickly noticed the private sector was doing a lot more innovation than the government ever will. In fact, if you look from 1953 to 2017, there was parity between the private sector and the government up until the late 80s. But now there’s a delta of $250 billion in terms of what each sector is doing in research and development.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Sean touches on his time at DIU, the Defense Innovation Unit. There he worked with men and women in uniform to learn about the priority problems that impact their mission. Once he knew that, he would find the entities that could solve their problems with already established products. An incredible collaboration.