By Kenneth A. Stewart

ViaSat Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dankberg, addresses NPS students during a scheduled Secretary of the Navy Guest Lecture at King Auditorium, May 28. Dankberg discussed his "adventures in disruption," sharing lessons that he learned turning a start-up launched from his garage in 1986 into a multibillion dollar company that employees over 3000 people and has three satellites orbiting the earth.

Dankberg attributes much of his company's success to its ability to "disrupt" existing industries by focusing on a dimension of value that competing companies do not think is important. Quoting famed humorist Will Rogers Dankberg noted, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble. Its what we know that aint so."

"In disruption you lose [the battle] thinking, 'How can this be? I did everything right,'" explained Dankberg.

Dankberg also described his company's efforts to provide high-speed Internet coverage over the world's oceans to airlines like Jet Blue and questioned the government's inability to work with industry or to improve its own processes to ensure a similar capability.v "Right now there's a 12-year-old kid on a Jet Blue flight over the ocean with more bandwidth than on Air Force One," said Dankberg. "We need to do different things. We need to change the dimension of value in technology."

Failure to do so may lead to an organization's demise argued Dankberg who pointed to a laundry list of once top-tier companies that have failed to adapt and have become victim's of their inability to recognize the utility of technological innovations.