Introducing the NDIA Business Institute.

• Author: Carlisle, Hawk
• Position: NDIA Perspective

In national defense, education and training play a key role in determining success or failure. The outcomes of battles and wars often hinge on critical pieces of information, who learns it, who learns it first, and who leverages it first to gain advantage.

The U.S. military understands the importance of education and training, and it offers a broad range of opportunities in these areas for uniformed and civilian personnel to ensure effective decision-making and operations during volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situations.

As we move into a new era of peer competition, the defense industrial base also requires a broad range of education and training opportunities so it can continue to provide weapon systems, sustainment, training and other support to ensure U.S. advantage in any situation.

The National Defense Industrial Association is proud to announce the NDIA Business Institute as a new hub for defense-related education, training and professional development. The BI aims to build a more capable and effective defense industrial base, bridging the knowledge gap that too often separates government from the private sector. It seeks to amplify and complement current educational offerings within the defense ecosystem to allow NDIA to engage sections of the DIB previously unable to access quality information on how to do business most effectively with government customers.

As with all NDIA programming, the Business Institute will provide an ethical forum for collaboration and communication between various sectors of industry, government and academia. We believe all stakeholders, especially our warfighters, benefit from this cross-pollination of ideas, best practices and experiences, provided through structured courses taught by subject matter experts.

NDIA is an educational nonprofit, and the Business Institute naturally extends NDIA's existing means and ends. The BI's operating principles match NDIA's commitment to convene legal, ethical forums with warfighters as the primary beneficiary of a healthy defense industrial base. We will provide high quality education and training, practical to participants' demands and jobs, developed through collaboration with recognized expert partners, and delivered efficiently in terms of time and expense.

Additionally, NDIA believes diversity marks a robust and healdiy industrial base, one which is built from a diverse range of locations, perspectives, approaches, sectors, leaders and sizes that...