Overview

Hacking for Diplomacy is designed to provide students the opportunity to learn how to work with the Department of State to address pressing foreign policy challenges. (See the background on original Hacking for Defense class here.) While traditional tools of statecraft remain relevant, the problems facing policymakers today require them to adapt and adopt new technologies while delivering solutions at speed. This course will provide a platform for student teams to develop prototypes that match Department of State users’ needs in weeks. Follow-on funding may be available to student teams for further refinement and development of prototypes.
 
In this class, student teams select from an existing set of problems provided by the Department of State. Hacking for Diplomacy is not a product incubator for a specific technology solution. Instead, as teams follow the Mission Model Canvas, they'll develop a deeper understanding of the selected problem, explore a host of potential technological solutions, discover the challenges of deploying solutions. Using the Lean LaunchPad Methodology, the class focuses teams to:

  1. Profoundly understand the problems/needs of State Department beneficiaries and stakeholders
  2. Rapidly iterate technology solutions while searching for product-market fit 
  3. Understand all the stakeholders, deployment issues, costs, resources, and ultimate mission value
  4. Produce a repeatable model that can be used to launch other potential technology solutions

General

This class is team-based. Working and studying will be done exclusively in teams. You will be admitted as a team. Teams must submit a proposal for entry before the class begins. Projects must be approved before the class.

​​The teams will self-organize and establish individual roles on their own. In addition to the instructors and TA, each team will be assigned a point of contact from the problem sponsor, a mentor with State Department or relevant diplomatic or government experience at Stanford to provide assistance and support, and have access to advisers (including experienced entrepreneurs, service providers, consultants, or investors).
If you still have questions, please reach out at: hacking4diplomacy-staff@lists.stanford.edu

Enrollment

​Admission is by teams of four Stanford students from any school or department
  • Teams must submit an application (a mission model canvas and team description) and interview with the teaching team prior to the class start date.
  • Teams should include a diversity of backgrounds and areas of expertise, including at least two members with technical (e.g. engineering, computer science, data science) skills and at least one member from the social sciences or liberal arts (e.g. political science, business)
  • Your entire team must attend the interview and first class to be enrolled.
  • The class list and any wait-listed students will be posted online
  • If you are looking to create/join a team, sign up on this Google Doc and attend info sessions/webinars. Info sessions and the first class meeting will include opportunities to meet potential teammates. 

Students

  • Priority is given to Stanford Graduate students. Non graduates can be on teams. Non-students can serve as advisors to the teams, but cannot be counted in the four core team members.
  • Exceptions for team size and external members will be made on a case-by-case basis.
  • ​There are no remote options for this course – you must take the class on campus.
  • This is very intense class with a very high workload. We expect you to invest at least 15-20 hours per week.​

Attendance & Participation

  • You cannot miss the first class without prior approval
  • This is very intense class with a very high workload. If you cannot commit to 15-20 hours a week outside the classroom, this class is not for you.
  • The startup culture at times can feel brusque and impersonal, but in reality is focused and oriented to create immediate action in time- and cash-constrained environments.
  • If during the quarter you find you cannot continue to commit the time, immediately notify your team members and teaching team and drop the class.
  • If you expect to miss a class, please let the Head TA and your team members know ahead of time via email.
  • ​We expect your attention during our presentations and those of your fellow students. If you’re getting bored, tired or inattentive step outside for some air. If we see you reading email or browsing the web we will ask you to leave the class.
  • ​During your classmates’ presentations you will be required to give feedback online. Please bring a laptop to every class and be prepared to give your undivided attention to the team at the front of the room. 

Deliverables

Meaningful customer discovery requires the development of a minimum viable product (MVP). Therefore, each team should have the applicable goal of the following:
  1. Product deliverables - whether hardware, software or service, teams deliver a minimal viable product every week
  2. Your weekly blog is an integral part of your deliverables. It’s how we measure your progress.
  3. Your team will present a weekly in-class Powerpoint summary of progress.
  4. Your final Lessons Learned presentation will show the sum-whole of your learning and your discovery journey.

Intro to the Lean Launchpad Method

This class is not about how to write a business plan. It’s not an exercise in how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library to size markets. And the end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation or a
Y-Combinator Demo Day. And it is most definitely not an incubator where you come to build the “hot-idea” that you have in mind.

This class combines Lean Startup theory with a ton of hands-on practice. Our goal, within the constraints of a classroom and a limited amount of time, is to give you a framework to test the business model of a startup while creating all of the pressures and demands of the real world in an early stage start up. The class is designed to give you the experience of how to work as a team and turn an idea into a solution for a real world problem facing the State Department and the wider international community.
​
You will be getting your hands dirty talking to "customers" - Department of State and other government stakeholders and end users as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. You’ll practice evidence-based entrepreneurship as you learn how to use a business model to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development to get out of the classroom to see whether anyone other than you would want/use your product. Finally, based on the customer and market feedback you gathered, you will use agile development to rapidly iterate your product or concept to build/design something customers would actually buy and use. Each block will be a new adventure outside the classroom as you test each part of your business model and then share the hard earned knowledge with the rest of the class.

  • We teach Lean Startup Theory + hands-on practice
  • You will learn urgency, Evidence-based entrepreneurship, Customer Development, and "good-enough" decision making
  • You will do this by talking to 10 -15 customers and presenting the results in class every week.

Lean Launchpad Resources

How You'll Learn

Flipped Class​room
​Unlike a traditional classroom where the instructor presents lecture material, you will watch our lectures online as part of your weekly homework. The information in them is essential for you to complete your weekly interviews and present the insights the teaching team will expect in your presentation for that week. We expect you to watch the assigned lectures for the upcoming week before class and we will use time in class to discuss questions about the lecture material and to provide supplemental material. You need to come prepared with questions or comments about the material for in-class discussion. We will cold-call students to answer questions about the online lecture material.

Experiential Learning
​You will be spending a significant amount of time in between each of the lectures outside the class talking to customers. Each week your team will conduct a minimum of 10 customer interviews focused on a specific part of the mission model canvas. To meet your customers, you will need to truly get out of the building which means getting off-campus and going into the real-world. This class is a simulation of what startups and entrepreneurship is like in the real world: chaos, uncertainty, impossible deadlines in insufficient time, conflicting input, etc.

Inverted Lecture Hall
Sitting in the back of the classroom are experienced instructors and professionals who have built and/or funded world-class startups as well as seasoned professionals with significant experience working both with and inside the State Department. We won’t be lecturing in the traditional sense, instead we comment and critique on each team’s progress. While the comments may be specific for each team, the insights and concepts expressed are almost always applicable to all teams. Pay attention.

P2P Culture
​While other teams are presenting the results of their weekly experiments, the rest of the class is expected to attentively listen, engage, and react to what they see and hear. Sharing insights, experience, and contacts with each other is a key way that this unique laboratory achieves results.

Class Culture
Startups communicate in a dramatically different style from the university or large company culture. This class simulates decison-making at startup speed. At times this can feel brusque and impersonal, and advice at times will be contradictory, but in reality the class is focused to create immediate action in time- and cash-constrained environments. We have limited time and we push, challenge, and question you in the hope you will quickly learn. We will be direct, open, and tough just like the real world. This approach may seem harsh or abrupt, but it is all part of our wanting you to learn to challenge yourselves quickly and objectively, and to appreciate that as entrepreneurs you need to learn and evolve faster than you ever imagined possible. 

This class pushes many people past their comfort zone. If you believe that your role of your instructors is to praise in public and criticize in private, you’re in the wrong class. Do not take this class. You will be receiving critiques in front of your peers weekly. The pace and the uncertainty pick up as the class proceeds.

Projects

Pre-Class Prep
​This class hits the ground running. It assumes you and your team have come into class having read the assigned reading, viewed the online lectures, conducted interviews, updated your mission model canvas, and drawn insights relevant to your next steps.

Choosing Projects
​​We suggest that you select a problem in which you are a domain or technical expert, such as your graduate research. In all cases, you should choose something for which you have passion, enthusiasm, and hopefully some expertise. Do not select this type of project unless you are prepared to see it through.

Shared Material
​Given the amount of work this class entails, there is no way you can do the work while participating in multiple startups. A condition of admission to the class is that this is the only startup you are working on this quarter.

Our History
​Your weekly presentations and final Lessons Learned presentations will be shared and visible to others. We may be video taping and sharing many of the class sessions.

Grading

This course is team-based and the majority of your grade will come from your team progress and final project. Your peers will also grade your contribution to your team. The grading criteria are broken down as follows: 

 - Individual participation in class. You will be giving feedback to your peers. 
 - Out-of-the-building progress as measured by blog write-ups and presentations each week. Team members must:
  1. Update mission model canvas weekly
  2. Identify which team member did which portion of the work.
  3. Detailed report on what the team did each week
  4. Weekly email of team member participation 
 - The team weekly “lesson learned” presentation 
 - Team final presentation
​
This total is multiplied by a “peer grading multiplier” as assigned to you by your team at the end of the quarter. 
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