Today’s episode is with Steven J. Spear.  Steven is the author of the book The High Velocity Edge and is a multiple Shingo Research Prize winner.  He helped develop and deploy the Alcoa Business System. He is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He is also a founder of a consulting firm built on the tenets of his book.  Steve and I had a great conversation that actually turned into a two-part interview.  This week we will talk about Steve’s early experiences with Lean and Continuous Improvement.   Next week, we will talk about two papers that Steven has recently released that talk about accelerating innovation and succeeding in periods of abrupt change.