Course Detail (Course Description By Faculty)

Course Application

• Info Sessions:
  • Sept 1- Polsky Collabortorium - Meet potential teammates & hear from faculty researchers from Uchicago and other regional universities looking for teams to commercialize their technology.
  • TBD - Information Session on Hacking for Defense + Call for Startups themes released
  • TBD - Team Formation Workshop
•  Course Application:
  • TBD - Team Application link
  • TBD - Individual Application link

Course Timeline:

• Jan 4, 2027 - WTR Quarter Begins
• Jan 6 (Wednesday), 2027 - First Class Session

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Course Overview

Hacking for Defense offers an exciting and distinctive academic opportunity for students at the Booth School of Business and across the university to engage with urgent operational challenges related to National Security through the lens of entrepreneurship and innovation. 

The innovation toolkit (lean startup, human-centered design, prototyping) was developed to create new value under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Our largest institutions engage uncertainties at the cutting edge of technology and management with outsized implications. We believe such institutions should be more responsive to changing conditions and that they deserve commitment from our best and brightest when it comes to questions of innovation. 

All government teams working on national security are large, complex, and as impactful on society as any on earth. These teams face intense pressure to adapt their missions to: changing constituencies, evolving geopolitical demands, technology revolutions, social norms, and complex regulations. This course aims to train teams of students in how to apply the innovation toolkit to such organizations and their challenges. 

How to Get In | Students will APPLY TO THE CLASS IN FALL QUARTER. 

• The primary path will be to apply as a team which will be facilitated through a series of in-person events with the Polsky Center for students to find compelling problems to build a company around, meet students from across campus, and submit an application. 

• In the FALL, we will announce a “Call for Startups” in areas that we curate including IP/technology from university faculty labs, regional national security partners, as well as defense and intelligence agencies. 

• In addition to our annual “Call for Startup” themes, any existing startup at the university, which believes that its solution or technology could find a buyer/user in the national security ecosystem can also apply. For those teams, the course will function as a go-to-market accelerator into government and national security.

• There will also be a secondary path to apply as an individual--which will only be used to backfill spots on teams for specific skills (but those teams will interview and select students that they wish to add). For the best chance to get admitted, either build or find a team to contribute to.

Unique, High-Level Access | In Winter Quarter, teams will be introduced to a “government sponsor”--usually an experienced government official, but sometimes an industrial base leader, federal lab researcher, or investor. These sponsors will support your initial customer discovery outreach and introductions to help you understand your “problem and opportunity space.” The course’s projects center on the types of problems that few people get access to throughout their careers--working directly with high-level policy and operational experts asking your team to solve problems they’ve been unable to address. 

Utilization of Research Funding | All teams are required to complete at least one site or customer discovery visit by Week 6. Not everyone on the team will travel, but we are fortunate to have access to both outside and internal funding to support teams in their research and development. Teams will prepare a justification (the more scheduled interviews the better) and submit a plan. Teams may travel more than once if they can justify the value of being on-site or at a particular event/conference. Don’t waste the opportunity.

Who is this for? | No project requires security clearance and all are open to all university students including international students. In our experience, all of our projects require creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration. No single background ever sufficiently addresses these opportunities. Therefore, we actively recruit students from across campus and support them in forming effective teams. Each team’s goal during the course is to develop a viable business model for a dual-use new venture--serving customers both in government and the private sector. 

Ultimate Learning Objective | This course is designed around the experience of doing innovation. By the end, students will have had personal experience systematically reducing organizational uncertainties and creating breakout solutions that can gain adoption within large organizations and markets. Students will be supported by both the faculty as well as expert coaches from the national labs, agencies, technology firms, investment firms, and DoD affiliates. 

Entrepreneurial Outcomes & Past Projects | In the course’s first seven years at Uchicago (drawing from students across Uchicago), we have had 9 teams successfully advance into the various NVC programs, one win $80k, and another that was commercially acquired within 12 months of starting the class. Past Projects focused on: quantum communication, logistics, rare earth elements, deep-tech, data-fusion, bio-tech, market creation, gender equity, digital manufacturing, distributed knowledge management, space management, and cyber security. (We expect future projects will be equally diverse). In the course evaluations, many students said the course was the most impactful they’ve had during their degree programs.

Project-Based Experience + Workload | Each student team will be partnered to a DoD/IC agency with a dedicated agency-lead who will support the student’s research and development experience. This course is intense with a goal of 60+ stakeholder interviews and dozens of experiments over the course of 10 weeks. Additionally, expect to watch posted videos, read assigned materials, meet as a team to plan work and synthesize findings, conduct interviews with external stakeholders, update your Mission Model Canvas and PR/FAQ memos, as well as meet with your sponsor and with our coaches. Students at Uchicago and at other universities in the Hacking for Defense network have reported out-of-class time commitments of between 12-18hrs/week. **We don’t recommend taking this course if you have other time intensive commitments.**   

There are no formal requirements for this class. Diverse combinations of personal and professional experiences are highly desired. Cannot enroll in BUSN 34715 and LAWS 53455, PPHA 33830 or INRE 32002 concurrently (or previously).

No project requires security clearance and therefore all are open to international students.

Required Texts:

• Phase 1 - Method, Mindsets, and Landscape

  • MisMatch, Kat Holmes (short book with a fantastic framing for thinking about innovation across sectors and contexts.)

  • Talking to Humans (PDF - free via internet/Canvas site) 

  • Testing with Humans (PDF - free via internet/Canvas site) 

• Phase 2 & 3 - Field Work and Venture Creation

  • Sprint, Jake Knapp

  • Business Model Generation, Osterwalder, et al (Highly visual reference and explainer for the Business Model Canvas that has been adapted to the Mission Model Canvas for Hacking for Defense.)

• + See Canvas Weekly for additional readings and videos

Recommended Texts: 

• Slideology, Nancy Duarte (an excellent resource for designing presentations and storytelling in this class and across your career)
• (optional) The Startup Owner’s Manual, Steve Blank & Bob Dorf (Desk reference for future innovation work, we’ll sample across it.)

• 45% Customer Discovery & Venture Development (Team) | Assessed across the quarter using PR/FAQ iterations, interview evidence, landing-page experiments, team records, workshops, and other deliverables. Teams are evaluated primarily on the rigor with which they identify assumptions, gather evidence, update beliefs, and improve their proposed business model.
• 30% Final Venture Pitch Presentation (Team) | A concise final argument to an investor about the opportunity supported by evidence. Evaluated on value proposition, beneficiary/customer evidence, stakeholder buy-in, business model, the team's ability to distinguish what it knows from what remains uncertain, and what resources ($) they need to eliminate the next significant risks. 
• 15% Individual Learning & Judgment (Individual) | Based on evidence of the student's reasoning throughout the quarter plus a short individual end-of-quarter oral review. Students must demonstrate mastery of the course toolkit, explain how evidence changed their thinking, diagnose failures or missed assumptions in their or their team’s work, and transfer course principles to unfamiliar problems.
• 10% Professional Contribution (Individual) | Preparation, reliability, substantive contribution to team and class work, useful feedback to peers, engagement with coaches/clients, and contribution to the learning environment.

All assignments must be turned in on time. Late assignment may incur an adjustment. 

Peer Evaluation (adjustment to final grade): Peer evaluations are used to ensure that team grades fairly reflect individual contribution. You will complete confidential peer evaluations twice during the quarter. The first evaluation is primarily developmental and gives you an opportunity to correct contribution problems. The final evaluation may adjust the team-based portion of an individual student’s grade when there is consistent evidence of contribution that is materially above or below expectations. Peer ratings are not automatic votes; the instructor will consider the specificity and consistency of peer feedback alongside other evidence of contribution.