Steven J. Spear is a Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He is an internationally recognized expert on leadership, innovation, and operational excellence, best known for uncovering how high-performing organizations achieve extraordinary results through fast learning and disciplined problem-solving.

Steve is the author of The High Velocity Edge, winner of the Philip Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality, and his research has earned five Shingo Prizes and a McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review. His seminal work, including Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System and Learning to Lead at Toyota, has become foundational in lean manufacturing and organizational learning.

Beyond academia, Steve has advised global leaders such as Intel, Lockheed Martin, Intuit, Novelis, Alcoa, Memorial Sloan Kettering, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Navy. His contributions have ranged from designing the Alcoa Business System, credited with saving hundreds of millions annually, to helping the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative dramatically reduce patient harm and improve care quality.

His writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Academic Medicine, and he has been featured on Bloomberg and CBS.

With a career dedicated to transforming improvement and innovation from rare breakthroughs into repeatable disciplines, Steve continues to shape how leaders build resilient, purpose-driven organizations across industries.