Who was the American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, who surrounded himself with the group of experts called Whiz Kids?
Whiz Kids (Department of Defense) Whiz Kids was a name given to a group of experts from RAND Corporation with which Robert McNamara surrounded himself in order to turn around the management of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1960s. The purpose was to shape a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age by bringing in economic analysis, operations research, game theory, computing, as well as implementing modern management systems to coordinate the huge dimension of operations of the DoD with methods such as the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). They were called the Whiz Kids recalling the group at Ford Motor Company that McNamara was part of a decade earlier. The group included (among others):
William O. Studeman William Oliver "Bill" Studeman (born January 16, 1940) is a retired Admiral of the United States Navy and former Deputy Director of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, with two extended periods as Acting Director of Central Intelligence. As Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, he served in the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton under three Directors of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates, R. James Woolsey Jr., and John M. Deutch. Admiral Studeman retired from the Navy in 1995 after almost 35 years of service. Between 1988 and 1992 he was director of the National Security Agency; he was the Director of Naval Intelligence, from September 1985 to July 1988.