The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO STEVEN BLANK
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HON. ANNA G. ESHOO
of california
in the house of representatives
Monday, November 1, 2021
Ms. ESHOO. Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Steve Blank, an entrepreneur who has inspired thousands of innovators to solve some of the world's most pressing problems.
Steve Blank was born in New York City to immigrant parents and attended the University of Michigan for one semester. He then served his country for four years in the U.S. Air Force, repairing fighter planes in Thailand.
Steve Blank was fortunate to return to Silicon Valley in the exciting 1970s. He worked for 21 years in high tech, and founded many companies, including Zilog, MIPS Computers, Convergent Technologies, E.piphany
(now Epiphany) and retired in 1999. In the mid-1990s, he created the Customer Development model that focused on distinguishing between companies that execute business models as opposed to startups that search for them, thus launching the LeanStartup movement.
In 2011, Mr. Blank created the LeanLaunchPad experiential entrepreneurship class at Stanford University, Columbia Business School, and UC Berkeley. The LeanLaunchPad changed the way entrepreneurship is taught by giving students hands-on experience in what it takes to start a company instead of having them write business plans. Also in 2011, the National Science Foundation adopted Mr. Blank's LeanLaunchPad curriculum for its Innovation Corps (I-Corps), in order to help the nation's leading scientists and engineers learn how to take their tech ideas from the lab to the marketplace. The NSF I-
Corps is now the standard for how scientific research is commercialized in the U.S. It has been adopted by other federal research agencies
(including NIH, DOE, HHS, and NSA), and has trained 1,900 teams, and launched over 1,000 startups.
In 2016, Mr. Blank, Joe Felter, and Pete Newell created Hacking for Defense (H4D) at Stanford University--the first in a series of mission-
driven entrepreneurship courses to provide a new platform for national service and change the way critical national security problems are solved. H4D is supported by Congress and taught at 48 universities in the U.S. and at universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. H4D also gave rise to several sister courses that are accelerating mission-driven entrepreneurship in other sectors and policy arenas. These courses include: Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Oceans, Hacking for Cities, Hacking for Energy, Hacking for Homeland Security, Hacking for Recovery, and Hacking for Climate and Sustainability.
As a result of Mr. Blank's work, hundreds of students at universities across the U.S. are engaged right now in a new form of national service, helping to create a pipeline of innovation for our nation as they solve real problems at startup speed. As a result of their experience in a LeanLaunchPad or ``Hacking for X'' courses, many of these students are choosing careers in the public sector.
Steve Blank has written many books, teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford and other distinguished institutions, and has earned numerous accolades for his innovative work. He was listed as one of the Masters of Innovation by the Harvard Business Review and one of the 30 Most Influential People in Tech by Forbes. He won the 2013 Silicon Valley Visionary Forum award, and with his wife was honored with the 2013 Environmental Leadership Award. He has often been a commencement speaker and his speech at Philadelphia University was ranked one of 300 best commencement speeches in the last 300 years by NPR.
Madam Speaker, I ask the entire House of Representatives to join me in honoring Steve Blank on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the LeanLaunchPad and the 5th Anniversary of H4D. Steve Blank has made our students wiser, our environment cleaner and our country stronger. He is a national treasure.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 191
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