Stefan H. Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in innovation management and experimentation. He co-authored two influential articles with Reinertsen: six-myths-of-product-development (Harvard Business Review, May 2012) and wrong-lessons-from-manufacturing (HBR online, April 2012), as well as the earlier academic article agile-product-development-cmr (California Management Review, 1998) which predated the Agile Manifesto by three years. Thomke's own research on experimentation and rapid prototyping aligns with Reinertsen's emphasis on fast-feedback and managing-variability — both argue that product development success depends on generating information quickly rather than following a rigid plan. The Thomke-Reinertsen collaboration brought Reinertsen's ideas to HBR's broad management audience, significantly expanding his influence beyond the lean/agile community. Thomke's academic credentials complemented Reinertsen's practitioner-theorist perspective, lending additional weight to the critique of applying manufacturing practices to product development.