He illustrated this through three powerful case studies.  

The first was Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER), born from a critical need in Afghanistan and Iraq where troops were flying blind into surveillance missions. Commanders needed real-time visuals from 100 miles away, but the official programme was 15 years out. Chris’s team built a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with millisecond latency and proved it in the field. This taught him the massive value of using animations and demos to help leaders visualise unfamiliar tech, and ship a threshold capability early, even if it’s clunky, to get feedback from warfighters fast and with accuracy. 

The second example is the Simple Key Loader (SKL), which evolved from a small team of “13 people in a loft” into a full Program of Record (PoR) delivering over a million devices. A PoR represents a major acquisition initiative that is officially approved, funded and included in the Future Years Defence Program (FYDP). It signals a long-term, stable commitment to develop, procure, or sustain a specific system. For defence contractors, achieving PoR status means predictable, recurring revenue and a structured role within national defence programs. This transition required a shift in mindset, emphasizing reliability, repeatability and leveraging off-the-shelf components wherever possible. Industrialization may lack glamour, but it is critical for credibility and profitability. 

Finally, there was Tactinet, a PDA-sized (palm-sized device) tactical network that initially failed. Early adopters wanted to kill it. Chris took engineers to Iraq, went on patrol and fixed code in the field. This quick thinking and innovation led to a $150M contract and a converted critic who became a champion. The major lesson here is clear: walk the walk – meaning get engineers and operators in the same environment to work together on solving the problem quicker and more efficiently.  

Adapting your culture with engineers and owning your core strategy 

Beyond technology, Chris emphasised culture. Silicon Valley norms don’t translate to the battlefield. You don’t always need engineers in the line of fire, but you need a culture that listens to ground truth, not just documents. You need to stand behind your product – anywhere it goes.  

On strategy, his advice for founders is to own the “secret sauce.” Fund your core IP yourself to retain ownership, use government money for integration rather than invention, and position yourself as a systems integrator to add value without giving away your crown jewels. When working with primes, don’t fear them but leverage their scale while protecting your IP.  

Demonstrate capability without exposing schematics and let them handle bureaucracy while you deliver innovation. 

Perfection is the enemy of deployment  

Innovators need to remember, that good enough beats perfect, a 70% solution today saves lives. And think like a prime: focus relentlessly on end-user capability. 

Chris closed with a challenge: build a threshold capability. It doesn’t need to be perfect – just tangible enough for a warfighter to say, “I can use this.” From there, iteration becomes collaboration. Looking ahead, he sees AI and cyber as the next frontiers for integration – domains where speed to deploy will again be decisive.