The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition

Generate faster, better results―using less capital and fewer resources!

Toyota, Alcoa, Pratt & Whitney, and the U.S. Navy's Nuclear Power Program operate in vastly different worlds, but they have one thing in common. Each of these organizations generates constant, almost automatic operational self-improvements at rates faster, durations longer, and breadths wider than any of its competitors.

Excellence in operational management is the single element separating industry leaders from all others. The High-Velocity Edge is a blueprint for fueling innovation and improvement at both the management and process level in your own company. It’s not magic, it’s not luck. It’s something that that can be taught, cultivated, practiced, and effectively applied to an organization. Spears explains how to:

• Build a system of “dynamic discovery” that reveals operational problems and weaknesses
• Attack and solve problems at the time and in the place where they occur, converting weaknesses into strengths
• Disseminate knowledge gained from solving local problems throughout the company as a whole
• Create managers invested in the process of continual innovation

Apply the lessons of The High-Velocity Edge, and you will enjoy profitability, quality, efficiency, reliability, and agility unmatched by any of your rivals.

Steven J. Spear, five-timewinner of the Shingo Prizeand recipient of the McKinseyAward, is a senior lecturerat MIT and former assistantprofessor at Harvard. Asenior fellow at the Institute for HealthcareImprovement, he is the author of numerousarticles appearing in academic and tradepublications, including the Harvard BusinessReview and The New York Times.