H4MoD team creates startup to improve communication efficiency for businesses streamlining their growth

A Hacking for MoD team from King’s College London, Department of War Studies, that helped the Royal Air Force (RAF) find a more efficient way to communicate across its departments has created a startup to do the same for businesses scaling up.  

H4MoD is a university module in which teams of four to five students learn and apply Lean start-up methodology to understand and solve national security and defence problems in 10 weeks. This programme is run by the Common Mission Project, a registered charity whose mission is to create an international network of entrepreneurs driven to solve the UK’s toughest challenges.  The course empowers university students by providing them with the tools and skills to address and potentially solve real world defence and security problems.  One team did just that, helping the RAF solve a problem and using their experience on the course as a launchpad to build a business.  

We recently caught up with Team Silo to ask them how their experience on H4MoD led them to found their start-up company, Connexus Innovation. Postgraduate students Ana Tormo Perez, Fabiola Quartana, Tobias Grainge, Morgan Simpson and Radhika Ganesan were tasked with looking at a real-world security problem, namely, how to synthesise information sharing across the “nervous system” of the RAF. 

The RAF’s pain point was lack of visibility and information sharing across RAF stations which the RAF’s Command, Control,Communications, Computers and Information (C4I) unit had been grappling with. The lack of any formal mechanism to share information across stations had resulted in duplication of effort and time consuming processes.  For example, when equipment breaks on a station, a ‘resolution team’ is called out to identify and resolve the fault. However, information on how the team identifies and solves the problem was not being shared between stations.

Initially, the team hypothesised this was a technology related problem or one of a risk averse culture in sharing information. To test this hypothesis they conducted discovery by interviewing 68 stakeholders in the C4I world.  This discovery led them to validate the problem as not being a lack of risk mitigation tools and programmes, as they were found to exist.  The key ‘pain point’ discovered was that these tools were not widely used. The team’s “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) was to identify why they were not being used and to think about how to make best use of existing tools and make sharing information more intuitive.  This MVP meant the RAF did not need to invest in new technology, rather they could leverage existing technology to solve their problem.  We are often inclined to believe that technology is the problem where in reality ‘innovation is a sociological problem’.  As Pete Newell recently noted: ‘we have all the tech in the world, but what we don’t have, sometimes, is the ability to say “your system is getting in the way”.’

The team’s experience on H4MoD inspired them to form a start-up, launching “Connexus Innovation”, with the aim to “create meaningful and long-lasting relationships to help others achieve their full potential.” Connexus picks up where Team Silo left off in applying mission-driven entrepreneurship principles learned on the H4MoD course to benefit the wider Defence market and industry.

H4MoD deliberately seeks to emulate the startup environment in an intense and fast-paced course. Team Silo noted how this drove them to work faster and smarter. Team Silo’s member Tobias Grainge, summed up his experience noting the course was a:  ‘welcome change from a more theoretical and academic approach to studying security/defence. I do not see a better way to learn about this than being exposed to one of the largest government departments in the UK and being able to speak with military personnel, civil servants, and relevant stakeholders in the private sector from a variety of different ranks, positions, and backgrounds.’

Currently, Connexus Innovation is actively looking for mentors and coaches to develop their organisation and business ideas.  On a more personal note this virtual team hopes to meet in person in London in the near future!