Steven Wheelwright

Steve Wheelwright is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School.

Following his retirement from HBS in 2006, he served with former Dean Kim B. Clark at BYU-Idaho and then from 2007-2015 he served as President of BYU-Hawaii. (The three BYU campuses are owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) From 2015 to 2018 Dr. Wheelwright and his wife Margaret, served as President and Matron of the Boston Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this assignment they followed the service of Professor Emeritus, H. Kent Bowen, and his wife Kathy.

Since his retirement from full-time volunteer service in 2018, Dr. Wheelwright has continued to serve on several Boards, including O.C. Tanner (Salt Lake City, UT), Guestbook (Las Vegas, NV), Caresyntax (Larkspur, CA), Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation (Salt Lake City, UT), and the Wheelwright Family Foundation (Oakley, UT).

From 2003-2006, Professor Wheelwright was a Baker Foundation Professor and Senior Associate Dean, Director of HBS Publication Activities. In that role, he oversaw the HBS Publishing Company (including HBR, HBS Press books, HBS cases, e-Learning products, and newsletters/conferences). He also oversaw the major on-campus construction projects. From 2000-2003, after retiring from the faculty, he and his wife fulfilled a full-time voluntary assignment presiding over the London, England Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From 1995-1999, Professor Wheelwright served as Senior Associate Dean responsible for the MBA Program. He then served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of Faculty Hiring and Planning and had oversight responsibility for distance learning. Professor Wheelwright last taught the required first-year course in Technology and Operations Management and in several HBS Executive Education Programs.

Professor Wheelwright first taught at Harvard from 1971-1979 and was the Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford Foundation Visiting Professor from 1985-1986. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in 1988. In his years away from Harvard, he was the Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers Professor of Management at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. In his position at Stanford, he directed the strategic management program and was instrumental in initiating the manufacturing strategy program. In his research, Professor Wheelwright has examined product and process development and their connection with competitive advantage and operations excellence. His most recent book, developed with HBS colleague Clayton Christensen and Stanford colleague, Robert Burgelman, is Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2004).

Along with Harvard colleagues Bob Hayes, Gary Pisano and Dave Upton, Professor Wheelwright published Operations, Strategy and Technology - Pursing the Competitive Edge (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2004), a complementary volume to the highly regarded books, Dynamic Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization (New York: Free Press, 1988) and Restoring Our Competitive Advantage-Competing Through Manufacturing (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1980). He has also co-authored several works with Harvard Business School colleague Kim Clark, including Leading Product Development: The Senior Manager's Guide to Creating and Shaping the Enterprise (Free Press, 1995). Professor Wheelwright is also the author or co-author of more than a dozen other books.

Professor Wheelwright has a B.S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Utah and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. In addition to his Harvard and Stanford positions, Professor Wheelwright served on the faculty of INSEAD (European Institute of Management) in Fontainebleau, France. He was Vice President of Sales in a family-owned printing company and has consulted in the areas of business/operations strategy and improving product development capabilities. He and his wife, Margaret, have five children, twenty grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Received an honorary professorship from Xiamen University in 2009.