---
id: "entity-michael-hammer"
type: "entity"
entityType: "person"
canonicalName: "Michael Hammer"
aliases: []
source_timestamps: ["§ Incumbents Must Rethink Their Architecture"]
tags: ["management-scholar", "process-reengineering"]
related: ["concept-paving-the-cow-paths", "quote-stop-paving-cow-paths"]
sources: ["futures", "governance"]
isSpeakerEntity: true
---
## Segment 2 — futures

## Article 24 — a024

# Michael Hammer

**Michael Hammer** is a management scholar and the intellectual source the authors draw on for the incumbent argument.

**Profile (from enrichment):** coauthor of *Reengineering the Corporation* and pioneer of **Business Process Reengineering (BPR)**; originator of the 'stop paving the cow paths' dictum (1990 HBR).

**Role in the source:** historical authority whose 1990 critique is cited to explain why incumbents fail when applying AI to legacy workflows.

**Contributions to this vault:** coined [[concept-paving-the-cow-paths]]; author of [[quote-stop-paving-cow-paths]]; his obliterate-then-redesign principle underwrites [[action-rearchitect-workflows]] and [[prereq-technical-debt-d2]].

## Segment 7 — governance

## Article 85 — a085

# Michael Hammer

**Profile.** Michael Hammer launched the business-process-reengineering movement and is widely recognized as the originator of business process reengineering.

**Role in the source.** A cited historical authority establishing the long-standing high failure rate of large-scale change. He anchors the article's opening statistical case.

**Attributed contribution to this vault.** In 1993 he noted that [[claim-failure-rate-reengineering|50% to 70% of reengineering efforts fail]] to achieve their intended dramatic results — a claim popularized in his book [[entity-reengineering-the-corporation|Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution]] (co-authored with James Champy). His figure is the historical predecessor of the modern [[claim-failure-rate-bcg|BCG statistic]].