Elegant Solutions

Introduction

This books talks about the success story of Toyota, the automobile giant, and provides useful insights into the functioning of an ideal organization on the whole. The automobile industry had strong players long before Toyota came in to the picture. They entered as K-generalists in the American market. But now, they are the market leaders worldwide. As gathered from the book, this has been made possible by a highly structured and systematic culture that is also the hotbed of creativity. This book is different from the numerous other books on Toyota's success as it brings to light the human-centered creative process behind the visible success.

Background

Building on a rigorously schematized yet internally flexible set of operating principles grounded in a 1898 invention by founder Sakichi Toyoda - an automated loom that would shut itself down the instant a single thread snapped - this was the beginning of the Toyota Industries.

Toyota was founded in 1930 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a spin off from his father's Toyota Industries to create automobiles. It produced its first passenger car in 1936 and since then it has never looked back. In the first half of 2007, it sold 4.72 million vehicles and overtook GM as the world's bestselling car manufacturer. Its premier brands are Lexus and Scion.

Innovation at Toyota

Toyota defines Innovation as: "How to do something that has already been done, in a better way?" This simple definition helps Toyota implement a MILLION ideas a year. Inside Toyota, unlike many other American firms, innovation is a core company process and is seen as a tool to create customer value and the beauty is that these ideas come from every level of the organization. This is the greatest source of Toyota's competitive advantage.

The Elegant Solution

This is the simple idea behind Toyota's success. The quest for this simple solution to every problem is what fuels innovation. The Elegant solution is a combination of:

The beauty of Toyota has been its ability to collectively and completely master all of the above as a WAY OF LIFE.