Lockheed Martin Success Story

Key Results:

• Data from disparate sources compiled into a tidy package 48 hours faster than before

• More robust conversations about potential target areas

• Reduction in the size of the team yet we add more value in our outputs

CB Insights Products Mentioned:

• Collections →
• Mosaic →

Many tech companies claim that they are innovators, but innovation requires more than just creative thought.

Industry leaders must experiment and take risks for the sake of progress. The Aeronautics division of Lockheed Martin is the epitome of innovation. 

Lockheed Martin is a U.S. leader in aerospace and defense technologies, manufacturing everything from next generation aircraft to advanced missile defense systems. As the largest group within Lockheed Martin, the Aeronautics division is responsible for some of the most well-known names in aircraft, including the F-35, F-22 and F-16 fighter jet programs. Our Skunk Works unit in particular has a 75-year track record developing aircraft systems and Customer solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible. 

The Aeronautics division does a lot more than just design planes, though. My team works on strategic business and corporate ventures, but we’re not just a venture capital group, an M&A group, financial tools group, or an internal consulting group. We’re all the above, making us a powerhouse that adds value across multiple disciplines to the Aeronautics Business Area. The tech marketplace has changed dramatically, and it’s because of this, we have to remain engaged and work across the full spectrum of tech sources.

A Platform That Helps Us Look Over the Horizon

When I became a senior manager within the Aeronautics division, I sought ways to make my team’s job easier while improving effectiveness. How can I best provide value to our internal customers and anticipate their needs? In looking for answers to these questions, I found CB Insights.

CB Insights provides us with the data and expertise required to better predict what is coming and how best to plan for that new reality. We rely heavily on the Expert Collections feature, which provides real-time data on the market leaders and visionaries in a given tech space. That helps us quickly create a list of potential partners for investment and competitors in the field. 

Previously, we would spend a lot of time in meetings, brainstorming a list of companies that might align with a specific area of focus. My team would then spend days conducting research and creating a report with their findings. With Expert Collections, we can assemble that report in hours instead of days. Perhaps more importantly, the resulting list will be more comprehensive than something our staff could put together in such a limited time.

CB Insights assimilates data from disparate places and compiles it in a tidy package 48  hours faster than we had it before.

Faster Collaboration Leads to Faster Innovation

CB Insights allows my team to create easily shareable presentations, highlighting important news and information to quickly get other groups up to speed. We can provide data before a meeting to have deeper conversations right off the bat without wasting time. The only thing that moves faster than innovation is actionable information, so having fruitful discussions on day one is priceless.

Instead of worrying about missed opportunities, we trust the intelligence from CB Insights and focus on the specifics right in front of us. We move faster, and that’s a game changer.

Demonstrating Value Throughout the Organization

Another valuable CB Insights feature is the Mosaic Score, which allows us to evaluate thousands of data points about a company with just one number. Rather than ending up with complicated stacks of paper, the Mosaic Score aggregates this data into a single number to compare players at a glance. We use this information to advise our investment activities and guide our expectations about future success.

At one point, my team and I used the Mosaic Score to map out the entire Lockheed Martin venture capital portfolio. The results gave us confidence in our process and our investments. By sharing the results with our Corporate leadership, we demonstrated the value of CB Insights in our evaluation and decision-making process.

The beauty of CB Insights is it allows us to have much more robust conversations about potential target areas.

It is easy to fall into biases when assessing industry trends and individual companies. But by compiling information from multiple sources, we can take advantage of the power of third-party validation. When we have initial discussions with our Tech Roadmap Team, we can show that we’re not just relying on the expertise of our business team. Instead, we rely on a summation from many inputs, strengthening our position.

Why CB Insights Matters to Aeronautics

Over the past four years, Lockheed Martin Venture Fund has grown 4x, to $400 million. Our use of CB Insights has led to a much more robust Aeronautics pipeline, with a considerable increase in the number of additional targets. Our velocity is faster, and the engagement is better both top-down and bottom-up. We come up with stickier ideas than before, and without CB Insights, critical conversations with our Tech Roadmap team wouldn’t be as numerous or as rich.

Perhaps the most direct impact of CB Insights is the digitization of our operation. We’ve reduced the size of our team because we use a single platform to access key information faster. We’ve removed operational costs, yet we still add more value in our outputs because of the data and research from CB Insights.

For the last 20 years of my career, I have made a massive effort to pull on technology and what it can do for us—not just from an individual perspective but also from a development perspective. CB Insights gives us comprehensive information at every level within a technology space. 

Staying on the cutting edge means constantly looking over the horizon. You can’t solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s technology and solving those problems with new technologies will inescapably require new business models. We focus on looking forward, and CB Insights helps us stay at the forefront of innovation.