Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, every mention

Lockheed Martin (Audio) · Acquired May 30, 2023 · 29 mentions

• ▶ 1:08:41 David Rosenthal This secret division is called the Lockheed Missile Systems Division, later to be renamed the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.
• ▶ 1:08:52 David Rosenthal And what LMSC, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, did, I honestly think, like, it is bigger impact to the country, to the world, and certainly on business to Lockheed and to Silicon Valley than Skunk Works.
• ▶ 1:09:32 David Rosenthal Ok, so Lockheed makes the decision to start this new missile systems division in 1954.
• ▶ 1:09:46 David Rosenthal So just like Skunk Works, they set up the new missiles division in Burbank, also in an unmarked building.
• ▶ 1:10:19 David Rosenthal But it's important that the missiles division did start there because they took, as I said, a lot of Skunk Works management practices.
• ▶ 1:11:19 David Rosenthal So, the next year, in 1955, Lockheed moves the Missile Systems Division out of Burbank and up one-on-one to the Stanford Industrial Park.
• ▶ 1:12:30 David Rosenthal So by the end of the decade in 1959, just four years later, Lockheed Missile Systems employs almost 20,000 people in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale.
• ▶ 1:16:01 David Rosenthal To become an engineer at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.
• ▶ 1:18:10 David Rosenthal One went up to space, as perhaps is obvious and we've foreshadowed and literally is in the name of the company, the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation.
• ▶ 1:26:22 David Rosenthal So, we just told this incredible story about LMSC taking Silicon Valley under the ocean.
• ▶ 1:49:08 David Rosenthal Okay, two other things that I want to talk about with LMSC before we come back to the coda on Skunk Works and the Blackbird and all that.
• ▶ 1:49:21 David Rosenthal LMSC.
• ▶ 1:49:34 David Rosenthal What is undebatable is that LMSC, from a business standpoint within Lockheed, became the crown jewel of the company.
• ▶ 1:49:48 David Rosenthal I think at times in the sixties and seventies and eighties, LMSC was the largest business by revenue, but almost through the whole time, it was by far the most profitable division within Lockheed.
• ▶ 1:50:07 David Rosenthal There were years where LMSC generated more than 100% of the profits of Lockheed.
• ▶ 1:50:21 David Rosenthal And LMSC was keeping the company afloat.
• ▶ 1:50:41 David Rosenthal This is much more technology problems and computing problems that LMSC is tackling here.
• ▶ 1:51:34 David Rosenthal LMSC accounted for over a third of that revenue and a 128% of the profit.
• ▶ 1:51:46 David Rosenthal And then during the early post-Cold War period from 1983 to 1992, LMSC accounted for 46% of revenue, so growing percentage of revenue, and 72% of profits during that ten-year period.
• ▶ 1:52:01 Ben Gilbert It really is a completely different company today, and I want to save why as we drift toward today in analysis and all that, but that's crazy how big the LMSC business was at the time.
• ▶ 1:52:14 David Rosenthal So the other thing I want to talk about before we come back to Skunk Works is LMSC's operating principles and philosophy, and so much of that was built off the shoulders of Skunk Works.
• ▶ 1:52:38 David Rosenthal LMSC had seven tenets.
• ▶ 1:53:15 David Rosenthal Like, there's no Skunk Works book about LMSC, so like, we have very little information to go on.
• ▶ 1:53:20 David Rosenthal But if that really was tenant number one for the company, I think you could maybe extrapolate that a little bit to the market context is really important for what you're doing, and don't lose sight of
• ▶ 2:15:37 David Rosenthal This is an example, I think, of, to that first tenant from LMSC of threat-based need and real, you know, need, market need, maybe you want to adapt that to.
• ▶ 2:17:37 David Rosenthal And this is not a challenge that LMSC, at least with the corona project, had to face, because nobody knew about it.
• ▶ 2:17:48 David Rosenthal This is the period, like we were talking about at the end of the LMSC chapter, where it's LMSC that keeps the company afloat.
• ▶ 2:20:54 David Rosenthal And again, it was only the profits from LMSC that kept the company from probably going under.
• ▶ 2:43:18 David Rosenthal Dan came up through LMSC, started there, worked in LMSC for decades, and then became the CEO of Lockheed.