New Publication at Hitotsubashi ICS
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Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World's Best Manufacturer Click the thumbnail for more information. |
Excerpts from the Inside Book Jacket:
By almost any measure, Toyota is a model of extreme performance among the world's best manufacturers. The company is hugely profitable, known for strong engineering, durability, and reliability, and is on track to replace GM as the world’s largest automaker. What explains this phenomenal success?
Based on six years of research and unprecedented access to Toyota facilities, documents, and activities-as well as hundreds of interviews with employees and leaders of the company-Extreme Toyota explains what makes Toyota great and what you and your business can learn from its success.
Though Toyota is well known for its innovative production process-the Toyota Production System (TPS)-there is much more to its success than just its nimble, cost-effective production practices. The authors of Extreme Toyota explain that the secret to Toyota's success lies in a series of striking paradoxes or contradictions that are actively encouraged by Toyota's management. For example:
- Toyota cultivates frugality and thriftiness AND spends big to develop people and projects
- It is hierarchical and bureaucratic AND encourages dissent
- It aims for stability AND fosters a mindset of paranoia
- It moves forward slowly and gradually AND makes big leaps
- It is operationally efficient AND filled with redundancy
This creative clash of innovative production practices and traditional corporate culture not only works, it works extraordinarily well. Toyota manages to turn these seeming contradictions into unlimited growth and success. While most companies seek to stamp out internal contradictions and paradoxes, Toyota actively encourages them, resulting in continuous innovation and constant renewal. If you want to grow your own culture of contradiction and success, take a look inside the world's best manufacturer.
Praise for Extreme Toyota:
"This book, based on unprecedented access to Toyota, offers a revealing look at one of the world's greatest companies. The authors, professors at Japan's most innovative business school, find that Toyota's success goes far beyond its production system and draws on its unique approaches to marketing, sales, and human resource management. Toyota has reshaped auto manufacturing into a knowledge-driven industry. Toyota's ability to manage apparent contradictions drives its continuous innovation and self-renewal."
-MICHAEL E. PORTER, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, Harvard Business School
"At IBM's Business Leadership Forum, Chairman Fujio Cho of Toyota described the single most important challenge for any global enterprise: securing a supply of high-value skills. Extreme Toyota shows how this remarkable company has invested its resources in "training, training, and more training." It shows how business today depends not only on operational efficiency and strategy, but on people. And it shows Toyota's genius for the soft side of management-culture, relationships, and communication. This is a must-read for executives who want to learn about the true sources of innovation, competitive differentiation, and growth in today's global economy."
-SAMUEL J. PALMISANO, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM Corporation
"This is the definitive book on the secret to Toyota's phenomenal success, with important lessons for all leaders. The formula is simple and profound; namely, Toyota embodies the belief and practice that success requires leaders at all levels to make good judgment calls. From top to frontline, all leaders have the opportunity and responsibility to become masters of effective action. This book is a well written and engaging guide for building successful twenty-first century companies."
-NOEL M. TICHY, Professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
"A very fresh and comprehensive study of Toyota. You will find an outstanding analysis of the company's unique corporate culture and DNA in this book."
-YOSHIO ISHIZAKA, Former President and Chief Executive Officer, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.