TOPICS & CATEGORIES
By Kate Finkel, Staff Writer
The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) presented the webinar, “One Digital Destination, Millions of Opportunities – Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Digital OnRamp,” Apr. 22. Cheryl Ingstad, deputy director, digital platforms & developer ecosystem, Defense Innovation Unit, led the webinar which focused on the Department of Defense (DoD) Digital OnRamp platform that aims to match groundbreaking solutions with critical DoD challenges and offers an opportunity for businesses to showcase cutting-edge technologies.
The session covered topics that included how the DoD Digital OnRamp simplifies Government-to-Industry and Industry-to-Government matchmaking, how AI-powered tools help tech innovators navigate the DoD’s complex acquisition landscape, real-world success stories from defense and private sector leaders, ways to get involved and leverage the platform for funding, prototyping, and collaboration.
At the start of the discussion, Ingstad provided context regarding the motivation behind the project, highlighting the difficulties companies face when trying to align their technologies with relevant DoD opportunities.
“It’s a maze,” she explained. “When companies begin searching for DoD opportunities that match their technology, capabilities, stage of growth, and readiness levels, they often spend countless hours online, only to end up with a lot of opportunities that just don’t align with what they’re actually looking for.”
She shared an example from a company interview: “He told us, ‘I spent more time trying to find the right opportunities than we actually spent developing the technology itself’.” Ingstad explained that this problem is what DIU is trying to solve here, by helping companies and academia with fantastic, innovative solutions to navigate the system.
At the conclusion of the presentation, the discussion opened to audience questions, including whether the Digital OnRamp platform supports government-to-government collaboration. Ingstad confirmed that it does. “Absolutely,” she said. Imagine if you’re coming though us on the government side, you posed your query, well go through those DoD databases, and if there’s already another part of the Defense department that has dealt with the same problems/has it already on contract, we’re going to let you know.”
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