Lean Enterprise Institute

Anthropic and OpenAI are following SpaceX and moving toward massive IPOs in the coming months. Meanwhile, college graduates are booing commencement speakers who even mention AI. At the University of Arizona this spring, Eric Schmidt faced backlash for talking about AI and the future of work. A recent Gallup poll found that a third of Gen Z Americans describe their feelings to...

Most organizations are still trying to apply AI to existing workflows: faster coding, faster document generation, faster analysis, faster search. This risks paving the cow path — making the existing process faster without asking whether the process still makes sense.

The deeper AI opportunity is organizational redesign.

Lean thinking has always embraced ...

When John and Scott went into Starbucks stores to actually see how work was done, what they encountered was somewhat of revelation to both of them. John, an independent consultant for Starbucks at the time, remembers the chaos of the store backrooms and managers hauling materials in their cars from one store to another. Scott, who was VP of ...

Most organizations attempting to apply Toyota Production System (TPS) principles make the same mistake: they start with culture and leadership behaviors, without first understanding the economic logic and technical system that give those behaviors meaning. They emphasize respect for people, coaching, and engagement, but continue to operate under the assumptions of mass produc...

If you are like me, you were raised using a very effective approach to lean that starts with identifying and mapping your value streams, identifying problems, then systematically improving them. The improvements are anchored in the concept of value, or “what the customer is willing to pay for.” Do less nonvalue-added stuff and more value-added stuff. Using t...