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):
Georgetown Leadership Seminar The Georgetown Leadership Seminar (GLS) is an annual gathering of selected rising leaders from around the world for a week of intensive discussion on major international issues. The program was established in 1982 by Georgetown University in order to promote dialogue among individuals who would shape the futures of their countries. GLS attracts individuals from government, corporations, law firms, financial institutions, the military, international organizations, NGOs, the media, universities, think tanks, and elsewhere who occupy positions of influence and have the potential to move up to greater leadership roles. The selected participants are then exposed to the major global issues and the Washington foreign policy-making process through direct contact with top level policy makers and experts. The program is derived from Harvard’s “international seminar” conducted by Henry Kissinger in the 1950s and 1960s. The GLS is now administered by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. Original committee members included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, and Peter F. Krogh.