Steven J. Spear

Last updated
Steven J. Spear
Steve Spear at Naval Surface Warfare Center.jpg
Born (1965-01-10) January 10, 1965 (age 58)
Academic career
Alma mater Harvard Business School
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Contributions
  • Decoding the DNA of Toyota Production System
  • The 4 Capabilities
  • Rules in Use
Website www.thehighvelocityedge.com

Steven J. Spear is a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. As a Researcher and Author, he is the recipient of the McKinsey Award and five Shingo Prizes. [1] [ circular reference ] [2] His book, The High Velocity Edge, won both the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research and Philip Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality (ASQ). [3] [4]

Contents

His research and publications on "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Product System" have been credited with "shaping the thinking, conversation and understanding for how organizations achieve and sustain high performance". [5] [6] The "4 Capabilities" and their underlying "Rules in Use" have influenced numerous Management Systems from Intel, Lockheed Martin, Intuit, Novelis, Alcoa, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative, US Army's Rapid Equipping Force, US Navy, and DLA Distribution. [7] [8]

According to Clayton Christensen, the former Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS): “I honestly think that history will judge Steve Spear’s doctoral thesis [on the Toyota Production System] to have been the finest, most impactful thesis ever written at the Harvard Business School, and that includes my own doctoral work on the phenomenon known as disruptive technology. [9]

Early life and education

Steven J. Spear received his doctorate from Harvard Business School, a Master's in Engineering and in Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Princeton. He credits much of his early success to Professor H. Kent Bowen of the Harvard Business School due to him helping open the door to pursue graduate studies at the doctoral level.

Another major influence on him was Hajime Ohba of Toyota, who allowed Spear to "learn from his experiences and the perspectives he had developed or when he coached me toward discoveries of my own." In addition, Professors Carliss Baldwin and Clayton Christensen "were constant with their inspiration and support". Carliss’ influence on Steve's "treatment of the structure of complex systems and Clay’s influence when I write about the dynamics of innovative competitors". [10]

Work

Steven J. Spear's work has been acknowledged with five Shingo Prizes and a McKinsey award from Harvard Business Review. His “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” and “Learning to Lead at Toyota” are part of the vocabulary for high performance organizations. [11] [12] [ circular reference ] His “Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today” and articles in Annals of Internal Medicine and Academic Medicine have been on the forefront in healthcare improvement. He's contributed to the Boston Globe and New York Times and has appeared on Bloomberg and CBS. He has influenced some of the largest organizations from Intel, Lockheed Martin, Intuit, Novelis, Alcoa, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the Department of Defense.

His work is focused on two dimensions that separate "high velocity organizations" from their competition: structure and dynamics. [13] As discussed above, these two dimensions were influenced by Carliss Baldwin and Clayton Christensen. [14] [15] [16]

Paul H. O'Neill has described Spear's research as "contain(ing) ideas that form the basis for structured continuous learning and improvement in every aspect of our lives."

Honors and awards

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disruptive innovation</span> Technological change

In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The term, "disruptive innovation" was popularized by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, but the concept had been previously described in Richard N. Foster's book "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage" and in the paper Strategic Responses to Technological Threats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lean manufacturing</span> Methodology used to improve production

Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing. Just-in-time manufacturing tries to match production to demand by only supplying goods which have been ordered and focuses on efficiency, productivity and reduction of "wastes" for the producer and supplier of goods. Lean manufacturing adopts the just-in-time approach and additionally focuses on reducing cycle, flow and throughput times by further eliminating activities which do not add any value for the customer. Lean manufacturing also involves people who work outside of the manufacturing process, such as in marketing and customer service.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing". Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrial engineers, developed the system between 1948 and 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clayton Christensen</span> American academic and business consultant (1952–2020)

Clayton Magleby Christensen was an American academic and business consultant who developed the theory of "disruptive innovation", which has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Christensen introduced "disruption" in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, and it led The Economist to term him "the most influential management thinker of his time." He served as the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS), and was also a leader and writer in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the founders of the Jobs to Be Done development methodology.

<i>Harvard Business Review</i> American management magazine

Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. HBR is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim B. Clark</span> American academic

Kim Bryce Clark is an American scholar, educator, and religious leader who has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since April 2015, and was the church's seventeenth Commissioner of Church Education from 2015 to 2019. He served previously as the 15th president of Brigham Young University–Idaho from 2005 to 2015, and as the dean of the Harvard Business School (HBS) from 1995 to 2005, where he was also the George F. Baker Professor of Business Administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shigeo Shingo</span> Japanese engineer

Shigeo Shingo was a Japanese industrial engineer who was considered as the world’s leading expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System.

Muda is a Japanese word meaning "futility", "uselessness", or "wastefulness", and is a key concept in lean process thinking such as in the Toyota Production System (TPS), denoting one of three types of deviation from optimal allocation of resources. The other types are known by the Japanese terms mura ("unevenness") and muri ("overload"). Waste in this context refers to the wasting of time or resources rather than wasteful by-products and should not be confused with Waste reduction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taiichi Ohno</span> Japanese businessman and engineer (1912–1990)

Ohno Taiichi was a Japanese industrial engineer and businessman. He is considered to be the father of the Toyota Production System, which inspired Lean Manufacturing in the U.S. He devised the seven wastes as part of this system. He wrote several books about the system, including Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production.

The concept of operational excellence was first introduced in the early 1970s by Dr. Joseph M. Juran while teaching Japanese business leaders how to improve quality. It was formalized in the United States in the 1980s in response to "the crisis" among large companies whose market share was shrinking due to quality goods imported from Japan.

Michael E. Raynor is a Canadian writer, director at Deloitte Services LP, and an expert on business management practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Bodek</span>

Norman Bodek was a teacher, consultant, author and publisher who published over 100 Japanese management books in English, including the works of Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Shigeo Shingo, and taught a course on "The Best of Japanese Management Practices" at Portland State University. Bodek created the Shingo Prize with Dr. Vern Beuhler at Utah State University. He also was elected to Industry Week's Manufacturing Hall of Fame and founded Productivity Press, and was President of PCS Press. He died on 9 December 2020 at the age of 88.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Gunther McGrath</span>

Rita Gunther McGrath is an American strategic management scholar and professor of management at the Columbia Business School. She is known for her work on strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including the development of discovery-driven planning.

Mike Rother is an American researcher. He introduced the widespread business practices of Value Stream Mapping and Toyota Kata. He has been affiliated with the Industrial Technology Institute, the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Stuttgart), and the Technical University Dortmund.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subir Chowdhury</span> Bangladeshi author

Subir Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi-American author of 15 books and noted for his work in quality and management. He is currently the chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC, in Bingham Farms, Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shingo Prize</span> Award

The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence is an award for operational excellence given to organizations worldwide by the Shingo Institute, part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. In order to be selected as a recipient of the Shingo Prize, an organization "challenges" or applies for the award by first submitting an achievement report that provides data about recent business improvements and accomplishments and then undergoing an onsite audit performed by Shingo Institute examiners. Organizations are scored relative to how closely their culture matches the ideal as defined by the Shingo Model™. Organizations that meet the criteria are awarded the Shingo Prize. Other awards include the Shingo Silver Medallion, the Shingo Bronze Medallion, the Research Award, and the Publication Award.

Dr. Carliss Y. Baldwin is an American economist and the William L. White Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Her book on modularity in complex technological systems, Design Rules, published in 2000 and co-written with Kim B. Clark, has been called "a landmark book" that has impacted research on organization theory, competitive strategy, and innovation.

Patricia Anne Acquaviva Gabow is an American academic physician, medical researcher, healthcare executive, author and lecturer. Specializing in nephrology, she joined the department of medicine, division of renal diseases, at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 1973, advancing to a full professorship in 1987; she is presently Professor Emerita. She was the principal investigator on the National Institutes of Health Human Polycystic Kidney Disease research grant, which ran from 1985 to 1999, and defined the clinical manifestations and genetics of the disease in adults and children. She served for two decades as CEO of Denver Health, an integrated public healthcare system in Denver, Colorado, where she implemented numerous business-based systems to streamline operations, improve patient care, and recognize cost savings. In particular, her introduction of the "Lean" quality-improvement system, based on the Toyota Production System, earned her national recognition. She is the author of more than 150 articles and book chapters, three books, and has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching, physician care, and leadership. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Management system (open source)</span>

Management System (Open Source) is a socio-technical system that leverages the cumulative knowledge of management practitioners and evidenced based research from the past 130 years. The system was developed by DoD components in partnership with industry experts and academic researchers and builds off of the US Department of Wars version 1.0 open source management system - Training Within Industry.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence", Wikipedia, 2020-02-25, retrieved 2020-03-25
  2. 1 2 "The 47th Annual McKinsey Awards: Recognizing Excellence in Management Thinking". Harvard Business Review. 2006-04-01. ISSN   0017-8012 . Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  3. "ASQ Awards Philip Crosby Medal". www.qualitymag.com. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  4. "Crosby Medal | ASQ". asq.org. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  5. Baranek, Andrej (May 10, 2010). "The DNA of Toyota Revisited: Issues and Challenges of Lean Implementation" (PDF). POMS. S2CID   9957249. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 26, 2019.
  6. Wincel, Jeffrey P., author. (23 April 2013). People, Process, and Culture : Lean Manufacturing in the Real World. CRC Press. ISBN   978-1-4665-5790-1. OCLC   990193126.{{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. "Alcoa Business System in action" (PDF).
  8. "CHIPS Articles: Chief of Naval Operations Shares His Vision for High Velocity Learning". www.doncio.navy.mil. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  9. Christensen, Clayton M., author. (2016). The innovator's dilemma : when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN   978-1-63369-178-0. OCLC   911172216.{{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. Spear, Steven J. (2009). Chasing the rabbit : how market leaders outdistance the competition and how great companies can catch up and win. McGraw-Hill. ISBN   978-0-07-164151-7. OCLC   285255407.
  11. "See, Swarm, Solve and Sustain". Seapower .
  12. "Management system (open source)", Wikipedia, 2020-03-24, retrieved 2020-03-25
  13. "Book Review: "The High Velocity Edge" by Dr. Steven Spear". IT Revolution. 2015-01-22. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  14. Clayton. (2013). Innovator's Solution, The : Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Perseus Book LLC (Ingram). ISBN   978-1-4221-9658-8. OCLC   1024281603.
  15. Baldwin, Carliss Y. (2012). "Organization Design for Distributed Innovation". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2055814. ISSN   1556-5068. S2CID   167569362.
  16. Baldwin, Carliss Y. (Carliss Young) (2000). Design rules. MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-26764-9. OCLC   50853807.
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