Shield AI’s autonomous combat robots are intended to help protect civilians and service members. As a startup, barely two years past founding, how should Shield AI engage with the legacy bureaucratic institutions that are its customers? How should those partnerships be structured and what are the business incentives?

This episode is a special introduction to Cold Call, another podcast from Harvard Business Review.

Cold Call distills Harvard Business School’s legendary case studies into podcast form, with help from HBS faculty authors and the entrepreneurs and business leaders at the center of the action.

In this episode, host Brian Kenny explores Shield AI’s work with the U.S. government to develop autonomous combat robots. Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s CGO and co-founder, join Brian to discuss the challenges start-ups face in working with the public sector, and how investing in new ideas can enable entrepreneurs and governments to join forces to solve big problems.

You can listen to Cold Call at https://hbr.org/2019/04/podcast-cold-call or wherever you get your podcasts.