Behind the Scenes of Innovation with Tim Greeff

Welcome back to the Defense Tech podcast. I'm civilian Sydney. As someone with no government or military experience, I wanted to create this podcast in order to gain a full understanding of what defense contracting is, how it's evolving, and the issues it's currently facing in the US. In this series, I'm talking with experts who will help me take a look behind the scenes of innovation, with a spotlight into microelectronics comments. This week, I have the pleasure of talking to Tim Griff, who is a founder and CEO of NST Excel. Tim has over 20 years of experience building and managing nonprofit technology associations and networks. NST Excel is a third organization he has helped to launch and build, each of which focus on scaling and commercializing innovative technology through policy and public private partnerships. Tim has spent his entire professional career operating at the intersection of business, policy, and politics, including directing record-breaking campaigns, convening and managing numerous coalitions, and leading successful policy efforts at the national, state, and local levels. Tim holds a master's in public policy from the Sanford Institute at Duke University, and a bachelor's degree in government from the University of Texas Austin. I hope you enjoy this episode with CEO Tim Griff. Hi, Tim. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us. How is your week going so far? Thanks for having me. It's going great. It's Tuesday. Thank you. Sweet. Well, as I mentioned in intro, I know you have 20 plus years of experience, the nonprofit industry. Would you mind just telling us a little bit about your background and what led you to start NST Excel? Sure. So, I mean, from very early on, I knew I was very interested in nonprofit work, and doing things that had some sort of social motivation or social elements to it. And that led me to the nonprofit world coming out of undergraduate. And so every job I had saved one was in the nonprofit space. And what I really liked about the nonprofit was its attachment to mission. There's a sort of a thinking about why do you want to get up in the morning and do what it is they can do. And having some sort of reason greater than myself to do that was always attractive to me. And so over the years, I was very fortunate to work at a number of both small and large nonprofits around primarily climate and energy issues. And that really got me interested in interacting at what I call through the intersection of business policy and politics, which impacts a lot of what we do. And of course, it's a lot to do with what NST Excel does dealing in government acquisition and technology development. And so I really learned over the, you know, now almost 25 years of existing in the nonprofit space that this is where I really like to be. It's it allows you to, you know, do good and do well in life. And that's really important. I think people underestimate how important it is to actually really like what you do between the hours of view nine and whatever you go home at night. And if you're not locked into that, I think life isn't quite as good. So I'm very satisfied with the path that shows in life. And I don't really see myself ever stepping fully out of the nonprofit sector. Yeah, other than NST Excel, of course, what has been one of your favorite roles previously? So I did, I was a lobbyist and advocate for the environment and energy community in Washington DC for a long time. And I thoroughly enjoyed that role. It was fascinating to spend a lot of time on the hill talking to policymakers, but then also talking to constituents and businesses about what do we need to do to address our challenges and energy. And what was so interesting to me about energy as a sector is it's one of the most heavily regulated sectors of the economy. And so from a business standpoint, it's not good enough that you have a sound business model and that you have what you perceive to be a market or demand signal for your product. And you can't fit within the regulations set at the federal state local level, then you're never going to succeed. And again, it's that intersection of a business and policy that always really kept my attention. And that's where energy played a heavy role into getting in NST Excel because the first OTA that we manage was for energy related technology. So it was the blending of that energy network that I built over a decade working on climate energy issues with their with a real focus on what the adaptation and the business of tech play was in dealing climate change that got me that link into providing some insight guidance and building a model to help the government find better energy technologies. It's super cool. So kind of back to NST Excel. I know it's, you know, it's a nonprofit membership consortium that works to deliver innovative technology to the war fighter and a quick, efficient and cost effective manner. So what inspired you to take a different approach to consortium management, like as you've done with NST Excel. So it really came down to looking at what was in existence at the time that NST Excel was formed and how existing consortium ran. Because consortium has been around since 2000. They were not a new concept when we got started back in 2014. But when we did the research and I really looked into what was happening, they were these very clandestine closed off insular membership driven groups were if you didn't pay to get behind the firewall, you have no idea what the opportunities were for you. And that always seems kind of antithetical to me to how innovation is actually done and being more open source platform and letting people see what problems there are. And so, particularly smaller companies that are either pre revenue or on their series A series B run of fundraising. If that's really cutting your technologies on that's what the government wants. Those people aren't going to start throwing money and valuable resources and time at, you know, on the off chance that there's something there for them opportunity wise. So, you know, a lot of what NST Excel introduced to the consortium world was based on bringing honestly true elements of how innovation works. Because a lot of the existing consortium or set up by people who used to sit in government and then just switch seats. And they were not they're not done to start themselves. They had not spent any time dealing with the fundraising and growing et cetera didn't have a good beat on how business was done particularly smaller business. And so if that's the audience you want to attract, you have to really understand how they operate what's important to them. And so NST Excel was the first one that really brought that insight into what does it look like when you're trying to build a business and you're trying to decide on who is your customer going to be. And you have on one hand sort of a more traditional for profit. We're just selling it to industry. And the other hand you have government, which is oftentimes very obtuse and it's hard to crack in and it's hard to know what's going on. And it's just it's a different language. It's a different speed. And so part of our our job and it has been from day one is to create that environment that's more conducive to any business to be able to effectively engage compete. But then also deliver a solution. It's got to be that engagement across the whole life cycle. And that's something that you know NST Excel to first. And I think that we're the ones that still do it the best. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Yeah, I've also noticed, you know, I'm discovered that we place kind of a huge emphasis on collaboration, which you touched on. Like connecting government with industry, traditional performers with non-traditional performers, nonprofit with for profit. How does this element of collaboration contribute in your opinion to the success of the US government as a whole. So it really comes down to spreading out the risk and then allowing each sector to play to its strengths. So I hear a lot that you know, the government is not risk tolerant, which is not true. Anymore so been saying, you know, the university is not risk tolerant or company is not risk tolerant. There's this sort of idea that risk has to be looked at at one specific point in time. And then if one sector is more risk tolerant than the other than the other ones that are risk tolerant and no one else can tolerate risk. And what's funny to me about the the government has no tolerance for risk is when you look at what's riskier than funding and startup funding basic research. So back through the idea of thread funding basic research is one of the lowest ROI's there is dollar for dollar just because you're really looking at, you know, the fact that studying how light transmitted through Ponska, and you had a role to play in modern touchscreen technology. There are so many connections and so much money and time and resources that is spent to get from point A to point B there. That's really risky and with a lot of basic research money. So coming from the federal government, they're incredibly risk tolerant because they're funding universities to do this stuff. The reason you want to create a cloud environment is allows each player within the values for you to play to their strengths and you know no one is necessarily an expert or no sectors and expert of going from ideation all the way to delivery of a concept across an entire technology category. So there are times when you need the federal government to play there are times when you need universities and research and so. institutions to sort of take the lead. And there are times that you really want industry in there. And that's a mix of sort of large traditional and small non-traditional startups and everything in between. And it's just the matter of creating an environment that's conducive to allowing each member of the product to play their strengths. That's gonna get you the best, most effective outcome. And that's primarily what our philosophy and our platform is built to follow. - Mm, cool. That's a really good answer. I like your example with what did you say the light through algae or something like that? So obviously a big topic of conversation in America right now. And for sure within NST Excel is the chips crisis here in the United States. How have you personally seen this issue bleeding into government contracting and our work here? - Yeah, so sort of when you go back through history there are times where the economy helped us make a decision to do something which made a ton of sense at the time. And no one could have necessarily foreseen how that would bite us coming back. And so the offshoring of microchip development manufacturing technologies that really ended up hurting us good back in the 90s. A lot of that was off short to Southeast Asia. And now there's sort of a different geopolitical dynamic there. And what COVID really helped expose is how fragile supply chains can be against pharmaceuticals to raw materials. But in particular microchips and as we becoming priestly to the end of upon ships and everything we do, not just our phone, smart phones and computers, but it's cars, it's refrigerators, it's ovens, it's major appliances, it's medical equipment, it doesn't matter you need microchips. And to not have that capacity here is a huge, huge threat to national security and also just to the economy. And so the government was always at the leading edge of helping to develop the microchip and semiconductor industry in the first place. Then there was great collaborations, great models of collaborations in the 80s and 90s on how that got done. And so we already know that there is a successful game plan for doing this. So in order to do that with chips, the comments program is a big part of the Chips and Science Act and is the first part that's getting going to actually start to deliver technology to not only re-enshore our microchip manufacturing capacity, but also train that industrial base necessary to produce these at scale. And so this collaborative model has been really important because for the current ships and the next generation ships, it goes back to what I was talking about. You need government funding and you need government engagement. You've got to have universities involved and you've got to be doing some basic research looking at the next gen and you've got to have industry there as well, playing and helping to bring these innovations to scale and produce these chips at scale. And if we don't have all three of these partners engaging, we're not going to be successful. And commons has created that environment through the hubs in order to create that collaborative environment that we need to be successful. - Yeah, absolutely. That's the perfect segue into talking about the micro electronics commons program. Can you tell us more about what it's been like to see the launch of this unfold kind of from your perspective as like C.E.L. like a big picture? - Yeah, it's been a very wild ride so far. I remember that the chips act passed during the microelectronic integrity meeting out in Indianapolis. And I was actually on stage doing a panel about smarts and people's phones are going off in the audience and the buzz sort of started and the chips act had been passed. And that created a huge buzz. And I don't think at that time I had a really good level of comprehension of just how quickly this was going to move and how impactful and how big it was going to be. So starting almost immediately after that, we started working with our partner in SWC Crain. We started working with OUSD to figure out, how can this be structured? What's the best way to set it up? And then we started working on the paperwork process that could be the hubs, but the great part about how comments were set is that it has been a true partnership from day one. And it's not just a partnership between industry, academia, nonprofits and government. It was also a nice collaboration from within government of the technical program offices, legal apartments and contracting departments, to get on the same page about how we could use OTAs. In this case, the smarts OTA and the unique structures that you can build within those to really custom build a program that fits the needs of the commons to set up the best collaborative environment to deliver on some of these advanced technological needs for microchips. Yeah, super cool. So I know that the goal with comments, kind of after five years, the hubs will be able to operate independently. What do you think needs to happen in order to achieve that goal? And what does that feature of independent work look like within comments? Yeah, so with microchemic commons and the hubs in order to achieve self-sustainability, it really comes down to just having their be-comers back and forth. And the government plays one role in that in providing the funds on an efficient basis, which we can do through the OTA, but it really comes down to this collaboration between the leadership of all the hubs, NSD Excel, and the federal government to ensure that they are clearly defined goals each year and for the five years of where all these hubs need to get to. And then we need to provide the resources and the responsiveness to help them build. If we show a demand signal and we show a commitment to getting to a certain both point in time and level of technical efficacy on any technology, history is proven that we can get there and that industry in academia will help us get there. And then you can create those self-sufficient sustainable ecosystems. And so the commons funds are a great starting point for that to help sort of kickstart that engine, but it's about building that sustainable self-repeccuating engine into long-term. And step one is let's start doing projects, let's start pulling in innovations. And as we start to create that economy and we create our own domestic demand signals for that economy, it will reach self-sustainability. And I have no doubt about that. - Right, I've heard Stephanie Lynn, so the new director of my collectronics commons, kind of give them metaphor of commons being like a super intended for a school system. Like the person that comes in lays out, although framework and wireframe, make sure everything's in place. So saying that, like of course, this was kind of a different structure for like a government program. Do you think that this structure is something that's repeatable in other future projects with government? - Absolutely, I'm actually very confident that this becomes the model for large organization programs. Because when we're, you know, one place where it doesn't get talked about nearly enough, even though it's talked about a lot, but this is how important it is, is we have really fallen behind in our defense industrial base. In our industrial base in general, we've off towards so much manufacturing, so much technical capability, that it's not just about having the facilities to manufacture and fabricate all of these components and package them. It's also about having the workforce trained to deliver on that. And that's why the workforce development is such a big part of the Chips and Science Act, because we've got to start training the next generation of leaders and engineers to be able to produce these technologies, once we have the laboratory and the fabrication technology to do it. And so that's a key and important part of the structure and the commitment to, it's not just about developing the infrastructure, we've got to build an infrastructure with people that can do the work. And so we've got to actually succeed on both of these to achieve that long-term goal. And that's again, while you've got to have, you know, universities involved, you've got to have industry involved. And you've got to have government involved. This is one of those problems that no one sector is going to solve on its own. We need to collaborate and operate efficiently across that cyclone across sectors. And if we create that environment that is conducive to this kind of development, then again, I've no doubt that we can achieve the goals of ourself. Yeah, so going off that, I mean, comments, obviously, a huge program that will have a really big impact in America and beyond. How do you think that this will impact domestic labor and domestic production? And then going off that, like, what does this mean for the future of America, our economy and otherwise? So in order to train and have a workforce to develop, you have to recruit into it. And it's hard to do that when there are no jobs available for students and people who are coming up in their careers to train to do. And so step number one was let's set a demand signal that moving forward from here, there is going to be a demand for jobs around microelectronics for manufacturing and development domestically in this country. And then it's working with universities, community colleges, high schools, all the way down to really invest in the STEM education and everything we need [BLANK_AUDIO] start creating that interest. But without the jobs, you're never going to get the workforce. And so someone had to blink first. It was a tremendous victory for Congress, one of the few bipartisan things that's really been pulled off in the last year. That was truly bipartisan in nature to go ahead and say, we're going to blink first. We're going to set the demands, they know. And now we need these partnerships to come deliver the workforce. And but you can't have one without the other. And that's another place where the hubs are going to be a key component. Because they are so rooted in an academic partnership with industry, you need to create that ecosystem. And that's where it really happens, is out in the communities and the brilliance of having the hub, so geographically distributed, is there is not one part of the United States that we can't touch with one of the hubs. And this really needs to be a national solution with national training and national binding. And that's what this structure is really aiming to create. And I think that there's no better way to create a foundation than the way it's been set up. And now it's time to get to work, start moving the resources through and the problem statement, start tackling the challenges, and then watch the ripple effect of what happens with attracting new talent, keeping talent home, and getting kids more interested in the microelectronic future of the country and careers in that. - Yeah, yeah, that's all super exciting. I mean, kind of last question, what are you most excited about or excited to see in the next years and months with the program? - It's right now, it's most exciting is just to get to work. The development process and getting the hubs awarded and up and running has been over a year. And a lot of times in terms of acquisition government, that's still relatively quickly in terms of how fast technology is moving that slow. And it's really exciting to now get to work in order to start moving the resources, putting the problem statements out and seeing what our economy and our innovators can bring to the solution set. And as we move forward on this, like I said, prior, I do think that microelectronic commons is going to become a beacon of how solving technology challenges, particularly when there's a large acquisition component, not only can be done, but should be done to ensure that we have the right amount of players, we get the best in the brightest and we create that environment that is conducive to true collaboration among industry, academia and government, and that creates a vision, but also a pipeline to create the solutions necessary to achieve the vision of the goal and reassert ourselves as not only the economic leader and there will also be technological innovation leader across every technology category. And this is really fundamentally step one. And I'm excited to see this program grow. I'm excited to see it succeed, but I'm also excited to see it serve as a true model example of how we can be doing it better than our competitors. We can be doing it better than we've ever done before and that we can use all the elements that we have at our disposal to really deliver on the promise of the innovation, culture and economy that we've always had. - Yeah, great. Well, it's going to be a really exciting couple of years and beyond. So I'm looking forward to it too. Thank you so much again for joining anything else you wanted to add or mention before we go. - I think that covers it, but we feel you having it. - Awesome. Thank you so much and look forward to talking again soon. Have a great week. - Thank you, you too. Bye bye.