Robert F. Stewart was an innovator in the field of business planning. Under his leadership, from early 1962 and extending into much of the 1970s, SRI developed a broadly applicable framework for formal organizational planning. The method has been widely and successfully used to align a corporation’s various developmental and operational units with its overall strategic directions.
SRI’s first foray into this field came in 1962 with the formation of a group under SRI’s Long Range Planning Service (LRPS) called TAPP, for the Theory and Practice of Planning. Stewart, who had developed some ideas on corporate planning at Lockheed, joined SRI that same year to lead the new group. He then initiated an important series of LRPS reports on planning. This series distilled into what came to be known as the SRI System of Plans that became widely copied and adapted in corporate circles.
These SRI contributions to new methods for corporate planning began in response to requests from LRPS clients who were pleased with SRI’s information on what to plan for but wanted help in knowing how to plan. As principal author of the LRPS planning reports and of the planning framework itself, Stewart influenced a wide range of executives in the world’s major corporations. The reports were often supplemented by week-long seminars, sponsored by the corporate attendees and conducted in both the United States and Europe. Led by Stewart and including SRI colleagues such as Al Humphrey, Manuel Sotomayor, Bill Royce, Carl Spetzler, Joe McPherson, plus other SRI and guest speakers, some 35 such seminars attracted over 500 different companies between 1965 to 1971.
Incidentally, the first printed use of "stakeholders" appeared in one of Stewart’s reports, entitled "The Strategic Plan" dated April 1963. This term for a person who has a natural interest in the results of an enterprise caught on and has been widely used both within the business community and elsewhere.
Thus, Robert Stewart contributions to organizational planning played a major role in developing SRI’s commercial business and in enhancing SRI’s reputation worldwide.