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):
Franklin Miller Franklin C. Miller KBE (born 1950) is a retired senior U.S. government official who is now a Principal at the Washington-based international business advisory firm The Scowcroft Group and is also an independent defense consultant. He also holds positions with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council of the United States. He serves on several corporate Boards and also is a member of a number of U.S. government advisory bodies. Miller served 31 years in the U.S. government, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense and, finally at the White House as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush.