Research

• Performance Improvement Strategy for Complex Service Systems
• Service Business Model Innovation
• Organizational Learning

Rich joined the Centre for Strategy and Performance in 2009. His research explores changes in defence industry service and support to the military. Increasingly firms are modifying their existing business models away from product focused manufacturing strategies toward more comprehensive support solutions delivery involving multiple firms, products, and users linked as part of a complex service system.  The study of how firms collaboratively co-create service with partners, customers, users, and supply chains shapes the core research question of this analysis: What drivers, enablers, and obstacles influence co-creation and service improvement in the defence sector? How do these characteristics differ in support to air, naval, and ground forces? Ultimately this research will deliver a framework to better understand defence complex service systems and serve as guide for future service design, delivery and improvement in both the public and private sector.  Rich is supervised by Dr Ken Platts, advised by Mr John Mills, and is actively engaged in the Cambridge Service Alliance partnership with BAE Systems, IBM, Rolls Royce, MOD and organizations across the UK focused on the study of complex services systems.   

Background

Rich is a US Army Colonel attached to the Defense Attaché Office at US Embassy London and studying at Cambridge on a funded US Army PhD Fellowship. He has led military organizations and served on planning staffs in the United States, Germany, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He most recently led a 1,000 solider combined arms task force responsible for operations across 1/3 of Baghad. He served on the White House Staff, at NASA , and the Department of Homeland Security. Rich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering faculty at West Point.

Scholarship

He served as an Assistant Professor at West Point where he taught engineering economics, dynamic systems analysis, and ethics. While at Yale he was a Teaching Fellow in Information Technology; Strategy, and War and Society. Rich was a management intern at a multinational helicopter manufacturing firm and later was an analyst in the US Military Academy Operations Research Center where he studied installation management and the design of joint and combined military headquarters. He has authored several published papers on operations, tactics, and military command and control systems. He has been an invited speaker at the Oxford University’s Strategic Studies Group, University of Saint Andrews, Cranfield University, and the UK Defence Academy.   Rich is a member of the London-based Royal United Services Institute defence and security think tank.  

Education

Rich earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering at West Point, a Yale MBA, and a masters in strategic studies from the US Naval College of Command and Staff.  He studied systems dynamics and organizational learning at MIT, public sector management at the Defense Resource Management Institute, and military strategy at Cornell University. He is fluent in Spanish.

Interests

Rich is a member of St John's College where he rows with the Lady Margaret Boat Club. He met his wife Christy in kindergarten. They both enjoy travel, spending time with their son Matthew, and are active community volunteers.