Systems Thinking Fuels High-Velocity Organizations - Steven Spear, MIT Engineering

Companies that are in the same industry, use the same basic technology, and address the same market needs can nevertheless exhibit huge disparities in performance. Consider Honda vs. Chrysler, for example, or Intel vs. Advanced Micro Devices. Through a combination of low cost, efficiency, timeliness, and responsiveness, some companies just perform more efficiently. In the course Creating High-Velocity Organizations, an elective offered in MIT's System Design and Management (SDM) program, students examine how and why some companies succeed while others fail through written and video case studies, lectures, and in-class simulations. Examples center on heavy and high-tech manufacturing, new product development and manufacturing, healthcare, and the military.

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Five Simple Things You Can Do To Make Sustainable Design a Reality in Your Lifetime

The past few days, I have heard buzzwords being tossed around surrounding the issue of sustainable design. Words like LEED, low impact development, walkable communities, etc. These are great words. Wonderful, powerful words. But what do they mean to the average Civil Engineer today? Not a whole lot. These words remind me of giving a visualization demo for Civil 3D. Everyone gets excited. Everyone loves it. Everyone nods, claps, smiles and says its cool. But nobody sees how they can make it work in their office, for their clients, given their constraints. So they leave happy that they saw a great show, but business proceeds as normal. A year or two ago, we felt like superheroes. We were in demand. We patted ourselves on the back for being so insightful when we majored in Civil Engineering or studied CAD. In my neck of the woods, talent salaries were moving higher and faster than starter homes prices. Anyone with a P.E. and an entrepreneurial spirit was breaking off and hanging their own shingle. It was a golden time.

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