Steven J. Spear

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. 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).

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". 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.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T-UEm-v5XQ]

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''.” Provided by Wikipedia