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 Van Cleave William R. Van Cleave was a former advisor to President Ronald Reagan, the United States Department of Defense, and Department of State as well as Emeritus Professor, former head, and the founder of Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS). The DSS program is now located in Fairfax, VA, 10 miles from Washington D.C. He is also advisory council member of the Center for Security Policy, board advisor of the American Center for Democracy and National Institute for Public Policy. As a strategic thinker, he is considered a leading Cold Warrior and long-standing hawkish policy advocate.