Jack Stack is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SRC Holdings Corporation, an award-winning, employee-owned organization based in Springfield, Missouri. Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation and its 22 subsidiaries provide a wide range of products and services, including engine remanufacturing, packing and distribution, business consulting and banking. SRC employs 1,600 people and generates annual revenues of about $400 million.

Kaizen: Where did you grow up?

Stack: I was born in Chicago in 1948. My father bought a house in Elmhurst, Illinois, and I lived in Elmhurst from the time that I was about three years old to about 30. Then I was transferred to Springfield, Missouri, where I’ve spent the last 31 years of my life.

Kaizen: It sounds like you were a wild card as a youth—you were kicked out of college and seminary and fired from a job at General Motors?

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Robert Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years. As director of public policy analysis for his last seven years there, he wrote speeches for the late Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in 2005 of fraud and conspiracy. Dr. Bradley is also founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research of Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He frequently writes and lectures on energy, political economy, and corporate governance. He is currently completing his seventh book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, the second volume of a trilogy on political capitalism inspired by the rise and fall of Enron. We met with Dr. Bradley in Houston to explore his thoughts on Enron, political capitalism, and the future of energy.

Kaizen: Why does the Enron case matter?

Bradley: Enron’s fall was front-page news in the United States and around the world. It was such a surprise that the company everyone thought was the best—the most innovative, most socially progressive, and so on—was revealed to be the very worst. Virtually everyone got fooled by the reversal, so it had tremendous mystery and appeal.

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In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Robert Bradley, Jr., former director of public policy analysis at Enron and currently the founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research.

Also featured in Kaizen are: more Spring semester student essay contest winners – Brandon McNames and Matthew Weber; Guest Speaker Jeffrey Orduno; and another successful High School Entrepreneur Day.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Mr. Bradley.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.

Robert Bradley, Ph.D., visited the center and Rockford College on March 28, 2007 and gave a presentation to an audience of about 115 students, professors, and interested members of the greater Rockford community. Dr. Bradley was a longtime employee of Enron, the collapsed corporate giant. During the company’s last years he served as speech writer and regulatory advisor for Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in May 2006 on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. Bradley is now president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in Houston, Texas, and is completing his sixth book, Political Capitalism: Insull, Enron, and Beyond. His previous books have been on energy history and policy. The theme of Dr. Bradley’s talk was how philosophy—not only business economics and political economy—is key to unraveling the Ken Lay Paradox to understand the rise and fall of Enron.