With Professor Nitin Norhia of the Harvard Business School, Champy is the co-author of THE ARC OF AMBITION: Defining the Leadership Journey and FAST FORWARD: The Best Ideas on Managing Business Change. His articles appear in major newspapers and magazines throughout the world.

Champy’s new book, X-ENGINEERING THE CORPORATION: Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age (Warner Books), goes beyond reengineering to show managers how to cross boundaries into the next frontier of business performance. The book demonstrates how cutting-edge businesses can find greater efficiency by using the Internet to break down walls between its customers, suppliers and competitors.

At Perot Systems, Champy provides strategic guidance to the company's team of business and management consultants and plays a pivotal role in furthering the firm's goal to create an approach to services design and delivery unlike any in the industry.

He consults extensively with senior executives of multi-national companies seeking to improve business performance. His approach centers on helping leaders achieve business results through four distinct, yet overlapping areas—business strategy, management and operations, organizational development and change, and information technology.

Prior to joining Perot Systems, Champy was Chairman and CEO of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Science Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a $200-million consulting practice that was acquired by CSC in 1988. Under Champy, the company's consulting practice grew at a rate of 25 percent a year.

Born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Champy entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959 with the idea of becoming an architect. "I was so intimidated by the brilliant, but subjective, architects at MIT that I switched to civil engineering, which I thought might have more relevance to the family construction business I expected to join,” he says. “Making the transition from a small town to MIT was initially difficult. But, by my junior year, I started to do well and was asked to stay on—to go to graduate school and to serve as a teaching assistant and instructor."

Champy earned his BS in 1963 and his MS in Civil Engineering in 1965. Anxious to broaden his education, he attended Boston College Law School, where he became deeply involved in the intellectual life of the school and served on The Law Review as a writer and as an editor of The Annual Review of Massachusetts Law. He received his JD in 1968 and quickly passed the bar exam.

After school, Champy returned to Lawrence to help in the family enterprise—a construction and lumber company—where he soon recognized how little he knew about running a business. In that same year, 1969, Tom Gerrity, Champy's roommate from MIT (who recently retired as dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business), had an opportunity to start a company based on the work he was doing toward his Ph.D. His first project was to build an automated investment portfolio management system, and he asked Champy and two other MIT classmates—Fred Luconi and Richard Carpenter—to join him as partners. They started with an initial investment of $370 each and named the company Index Systems.

Champy planned to run the new firm, but the death of his father took him back to Lawrence to wind down the family businesses. In 1974, MIT asked Champy to come back to lecture in civil engineering and architecture, to run its Alumni Fund and Alumni Association, and to be publisher of its magazine, The Technology Review. Eager for some fresh experience, Champy accepted the position and the mandate to revise and improve the alumni operations.

Meanwhile, Index was growing and changing its emphasis from information technology management to management consulting. In 1978, Tom Gerrity asked Champy to rejoin the firm as vice president in charge of managing and building staff and as general counsel. By 1988, Index saw the need to become part of a large company and was acquired by CSC. Soon after the acquisition, Gerrity left to become dean of Wharton and Champy became chairman, leading the firm to international prominence and its growth to $200 million. "At Index, I learned how to grow a business," he says. As chairman of consulting for Perot Systems, Champy now heads the firm's Cambridge, Massachusetts office and lives in Boston.

Champy's wife, Lois, is an architect who works for the Massachusetts Port Authority where she is helping plan the new Logan airport. She is also a trustee of the Massachusetts College of Art. The couple share an interest in modern art and furniture, and a love of travel. They are proud of their son Adam, who excels in both academics and athletics. Champy is in demand as a speaker around the world. He is often asked by major media to comment on the news of the day and is a frequent guest on television and radio programs. Champy is a member of the MIT Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Board of Trustees, and serves on the Board of Overseers of the Boston College Law School.