At this year's DSEI 23, Andrew Webber (Whitespace Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer) was joined by John Ridge, Director of Defence Innovation and Kate Robertson, BAE’s FCAS Director of Enterprise Enablement for a Fireside Chat to explore the collaboration between the Defence Innovation Directorate, MoD innovation teams, Defence and Aerospace SME membership organisations and the FCAS industry partners to jointly evolve the approach on how SMEs are engaged, their innovations accelerated and the capabilities exploited.
The Fireside Chat explored how to augment existing company-specific supply chains with a common and shared approach for a GCAP SME ecosystem that both incubates earlier TRL or new SME participants to be ready to engage in a future supply chain but also better enables the existing SMEs in the supply chain to collaborate more widely across the consortium of industry partners as well as with each other.
In an era of fast-evolving threats and transformative technological advancements, collaboration between defence organisations and industry partners, of all sizes, is paramount. Existing supply chains need resilience to adapt and prepare for unexpected events, respond quickly and effectively to disruption and recover stronger with an evolution of their operations and capabilities.
At Whitespace, our work in utilising leading AI technologies and developing AI-powered platforms supports the creation of those Defence ecosystems. It delivers the connection to external organisations and partners which allows for deeper collaboration to more rapidly and creatively solve real-world challenges.
You can access the full Fireside Chat transcript HERE
