Toyota’s Innovation DNA

Past few weeks there was a flood of articles covering interviews of Lean Guru James Womack. The word Lean is synonymous with TOYOTA, so the interviews covered more on his studies of TOYOTA. He stressed few things that TOYOTA does, like Practicing Daily Lean Thinking, encouraging its employees to ask questions rather than finding an answer. However if an answer is found (quick hits I mean….) it does not stop an employee from asking further questions. Toyota’s management education begin by asking questions and ends with it. Instead of competitor challenging us let us challenge ourselves is how Toyota thinks.

Many of you will say it is easier to understand all this, but almost difficult to implement and have never seen before happening around us. The only time it happens when someone wants to genuinely harass someone, you may say.

There is an interesting observation by James Utterback in his all time classic “Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation”, which is based on his research of history of innovations. He says to sustain its success firms must innovate and focus not on the products but on the people involved, he further adds saying “much depends on the habits of mind, commitments, strategy and patterns of behavior of the organization’s elite”. Because Eiji Toyoda had such right things, so did Taichi Ohno and therefore the rest of the Toyota.

To sum up I will conclude Toyota’s Innovation DNA as I understood it, Think Ideality and question everything that stops you from reaching there, like a PARANOID.