Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal of the High Velocity Edge, LLC, which provides advisory services and which has developed the See to Solve Real Time Alert System, software that enables accelerated problem solving, particularly with distributed workforces. He is a Senior Lecturer in MIT’s management and engineering schools, where he teaches and advises graduate theses in the Leaders for Global Operations and executive education programs. He is also a Faculty affiliate at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He has taught at Harvard Business School, and worked at the University of Tokyo, the Long Term Credit Bank, and Prudential Bache. He also serves on the board of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, Enlighten-Software, and Aceso. Spear graduated from Harvard (doctorate), MIT (masters in engineering and in management), and Princeton (bachelors, with an economics major).
Spear’s work focuses on managing complex organizations (i.e., many people working across myriad functions towards common purpose) so they bring exceptional value to market at unmatchable speed with ease, with the capabilities that provide “value at speed with ease” being a source of sustainable competitive advantage across development, design, and delivery. The core theme is that anything ‘designed’ will fail in unexpected ways (e.g., if the ways were expected they would be resolved), so everything needs an accelerated dynamic of error detection and correction to be reliable despite internal disruptions, resilient to external disturbances, and agile to stay ahead of changing circumstances. This typically involves working with senior leaders to create and sustain this high speed dynamic.
Tests in practice of high velocity concepts include:
High Tech Operations: A semiconductor plant compressed throughput times by 2/3rds, added capacity, cut yield loss, and reduced unit costs by half. Monthly profits increased $10 million.
High Tech Design: A jet engine maker reduced from 4 years to 3 its design-cycle time, halved engineering change orders (reflected as improvements in quality and affordability), thereby winning an enormous contract on the pilot program.
Social Services: The Pittsburgh region’s healthcare system cut by 70% a costly and painful complication, with particular hospitals eliminating them entirely while also adding capacity and reducing staff overburden. The Women’s Center and Shelter reduced from 4 days to 4 hours the time to get a abuse victim settled, despite having to navigate 42 public agencies.
Public Sector: The Treasury Department cut to 3 days from six months time to close its books, with ‘liberated’ analysts free to create new real time data systems for policy makers.
Publications based on this work have garnered the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review for “Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today,” the Philip Crosby Medal from ASQ for The High Velocity Edge, and the Shingo Research Prize five times. “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” is a leading Harvard Business Review reprint and part of the “lean” canon, and Spear has published in medical journals like Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, and Health Services Research and in the general press, such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Fortune, and USA Today.
Spear, and his wife, Miriam, an architect, live in Brookline MA with their three children, where he is on the board of the Maimonides School.
- Company:The High Velocity Edge, LLC
- Short Bio:Principal
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