Meet the Best Little House Builder in Texas

If speed were all that mattered, how fast could you build a home? Some years ago, the Building Industry Association of San Diego County sponsored a competition among builders to answer that question. The home had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and was made from standard materials.

The fastest time: 2 hours and 45 minutes. How do you build a house in less than 3 hours? By forgetting everything you thought you knew about building a house. The winning team used 700 people divided into subgroups of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other tradespeople. For weeks, the teams practiced to find ways to accelerate the process. During the competition, the winners managed to complete the rough plumbing in 8 minutes and set the main roof in just over 9 minutes.

It was fun -- and the experience also generated useful insights. Which is why Professor Tom Malone, of MIT's Sloan School of Management, shows a video of the competition to his students and executive audiences. "I use it to illustrate the power of speed," Malone says. "Not just as a way of satisfying customers but of inventing whole new industries. It helps people free up their minds to think about how to build organizations for the 21st century."