Jeromy Grimmett, Founder & CEO at Rogue Space Systems Corporation

Welcome to RADICL’s newsletter, DIB Innovators.?

Every week, we interview an expert driving technological advancements in the Defense Industrial Base that's keeping our country safe, then write up a summary of the top actionable lessons you can learn from them.

In our latest edition, we dive into our interview with Jeromy Grimmett , Founder & CEO at Rogue Space Systems Corporation . Here are the top takeaways from the interview.

1. Driving innovation begins with the right people.

"Driving innovation for me is doing everything I can to put a team into an environment where they can feel free to be creative, as creative as they possibly can be, and making sure they understand that it's okay to fail. It's okay, because I guarantee you, if they fail, we're going to learn something.?

“It's the old adage of Thomas Edison. 'I didn't fail 1000 times. I just figured out 999 ways to not make a light bulb.' It's that thing.

“For me, it's just hiring and bringing in the people that don't know what it is to quit. They don't know what it is to stop. They don't know what it is to have a problem they just cannot solve."

Actionable Takeaway: To build an innovative company, hire smart, driven, passionate individuals, and then give them the freedom to be creative and learn from their failures.?

2. Be prepared for regulatory and legal challenges.

"The thing that takes the longest in the program of getting a spacecraft up into space is actually the regulatory and licensing. It's the legal part that is actually the most difficult obstacle to overcome. ...?

“The technology, that's kind of the easy part. It's the regulations and licensing and all the legal work that has to go into it. I'd say that's probably the biggest challenge.

“Lead times you can deal with in the schedule. Pieces, parts, hardware, software — those can all be challenges. But the thing that slows most of our work down are the legal requirements."

Actionable Takeaway: Focus on making a great product. But don't overlook the complications and long timelines that may arise when getting regulatory and licensing approvals for your new technology.

3. Take proactive steps to protect your innovation.

"One of the things that we've done is we've implemented all the NIST standards. We did that. We're actually in the process of moving to GCC High in the Microsoft Cloud. We have certain areas where we've kept all of our data secured.

“So while we're also putting markings on everything, it's one of those things where even though we're not required, we're acting as though we are in that way we're kind of already a step ahead. We've already taken a step forward with it, and we're a little bit better prepared for whenever that eventuality does happen."

Actionable Takeaway: Take steps today to increase your cybersecurity posture and protect your information by following CMMC requirements — even if you don't yet have a contract that requires you to do so.

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