We marked a successful year with its Annual Summer Event earlier this month. Over 75 guests from the realms of defence, academia, and industry attended, spotlighting the rich diversity within our network.

King’s College London students tackle helicopter corrosion at RNAS Culdrose by getting out of the building and using other Lean Start-up methodology concepts.

How do you deliver Unmanned Vehicles (UAV’s) to the frontline with relative ease? This was the clear problem delivered to Kingston Business School MBA students by Lt Cdr David Houghton-Barnes aspart of our Hacking for Ministry of Defence course (H4MoD).

Squadron Leader Sam Grant of the RAF 20 Squadron faced a complex problem surrounding training data management. This problem was presented to a team of students at the University of Portsmouth who immediately began their discovery.

During the Autumn cohort of 2022, a team of five computing students from Portsmouth University took up the challenge of identifying optimal helicopter landing spots for Army personnel.

As the world becomes increasingly driven by technology, innovation and entrepreneurship skills are becoming more important than ever for future leaders to develop solutions for the evolving complexity of our world’s problems.

As a small start-up growth is hugely important to us. To help us bolster our offering, we’re looking for a high-energy and versatile Director of Programmes to join our talented and ambitious team.

Dr. Ali Hawks was named winner of the Innovation & Creativity Award, during the Women In Defence Awards ceremony, held at The Guildhall, London last Thursday 24th November.

Common Mission Project UK is pleased to announce Dr. Rachael Kelly as Interim Executive Director. Rachael will be spear-heading the organisation’s mission to bring innovative solutions to some of the UK’s most difficult challenges through educational engagement and outreach.

At Common Mission Project (CMP), we are immensely proud of our students’ record of entrepreneurial success. Since our inception in 2016, 2800 students have taken CMP Hacking 4 courses – tackling problems sourced from government and industry by deploying lean start-up methodology in class – building 400 teams and spinning out 53 start-ups. Even when they don’t reach start-up stage, many of our students build skills and form relationships that help them accelerate their entrepreneurial journey.

Paolo Lamparelli is a first-time Industry Mentor for CMP, having worked with a student team at Strathclyde University on the Mission Driven Entrepreneurship: Hacking for Ministry of Defence (H4MoD) Course this past Spring 2022. Industry Mentors are professionals in their field who are matched with an H4MoD student team to provide expertise, support and guidance from an industry perspective. Paolo’s problem centered around collecting information on soldiers’ nutritional intake, and his experience as a Registered Dietitian was crucial in helping his team come up with their innovative solution idea. We caught up with Paolo on his experience with H4MoD and what he’s gotten out of mentoring with CMP.

I knew I wanted my Masters Degree to serve as a segue into the professional world rather than as a purely academic qualification. With this in mind I took the ‘Hacking for MoD’ module as part of my MA in National Security Studies, which was instrumental in helping me realise and achieve my career goals and ambitions.

Gary Stewart is on the Board of Advisers at the Common Mission Project and joined us for a Fireside Chat in February 2022. Our Fireside Chat series features speakers from industry, academia, and ‘Hacking 4’ alumni to explore topics complementary to and inspired by our Hacking for courses.

The University of Hull is Common Mission Project’s first university to run a “Hacking for Police” course, where teams of 4-5 students will learn and apply lean start-up methods to solving pressing problems facing frontline officers in national and regional law enforcement.

“Hacking for Security, as well as providing our students with exceptional teamwork and problem-solving skills for modern agile businesses, also gives them the opportunity to work on real global security challenges. Working with UK MoD and Common Mission Project to source globally relevant challenges allows the course to support both UK MoD’s global presence as well as our student’s international background.” Module lead, Dr Gareth Tear

When Lila Ghosh began her master’s programme at King's College in London, she was drawn to H4MoD, the academic programme that is helping to solve national security problems at speed, because of the opportunity to work with actual stakeholders within the Ministry of Defense. She was returning to school after a long period in the workforce, and while excited to be in academia again, she really wanted to maintain a level of practical engagement. For her, the opportunity to engage with real-world problems and create tangible solutions couldn’t be ignored. Little did she know that her decision to pursue H4MoD would define her career and help position her as a leading innovator by the time she completed her degree.

The nation’s emerging threats and security challenges are being tackled by University of Portsmouth computing students, as part of a course to address complex real-world problems.

We caught up with Wing Commander Mike Burt to talk through his experience of being a Problem Sponsor on H4MoD. He recently sponsored a problem at the War Studies Department, King’s College London, looking at the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) recruitment process. His team’s solution will provide the RAF with a tangible way to measure the effect of the £15 million per year they spend on marketing, outreach and engagement activities to attract new recruits.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) has a way to monitor and analyse their carbon assets in order to help the MoD reach their Net Zero emissions target thanks to the work of a Hacking for MoD (H4MoD) student team from Cardiff University called Team DIO.

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.