The PUBLIC School of Technology, recognising the considerable innovation work already underway across the MoD, used the ‘Discover’ phase to align the programme’s design principles and learning outcomes with the UK Government’s Integrated Review. The Royal Navy, RAF and US Navy were keen to ensure fellows returned to their ranks with a sophisticated awareness of the fundamentals of technology and entrepreneurship. Our startup ecosystem meant we could design a programme that delivered exactly that.

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During the ‘Design’ phase, we translated our Discovery findings into the final curriculum designs, refining delivery planning to ensure learning content was truly tailored to the defence context with subjects including emerging technologies and their applications in defence, the importance of the end-user’s needs in defence and shifting traditional attitudes towards defence innovation.

Fellows gained 12 weeks of immersive education in technology and innovation, through a dynamic course made up of a startup placement, innovation project, seminars, workshops and a one-to-one coaching with our expert faculty. During PHF, Fellows were introduced to a diverse range of viewpoints, including the perspectives of innovation-focused entities such as the jHub and Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), sessions led by serial entrepreneurs, as well as the challenges of running civilian-startups.

Understanding the MoD’s ambitions to ensure they continue to build a culture of boundaried risk-taking where defence personnel both embrace and feel a sense of ownership in innovation processes, policies and resources, we continued to iterate improvements of our delivery and taught content to maximise impact following graduation.