One Million.
That’s how many ideas Toyota implements each year. Do the math: 3000 ideas a day. That number, more than anything else, explains why Toyota appears to be in a league all their own, playing offense on a field of innovation, while their competitors remain caught in a crossfire of cost-cutting.
Here’s the thing: it’s not about the cars. It’s about ideas. And the people with those ideas. But not just any ideas. Mostly tiny ones, but effective ones nonetheless—elegant solutions to realworld problems. Not grand slam homeruns, but groundball singles implemented all across the company by associates that view their role not to be simply doing the work, but taking itto the next level…every day, in some little way. Good enough never is. When an entire organization thinks like that, it becomes unstoppable. Like a number of other market leaders, Toyota recognizes that companywide innovation is a matter of assembling a group of talented people in an environment where innovation is required by everyone at every level. To create that environment, Toyota employs systems and structures that neutralize the typical barriers to ingenuity and release individuals to realize significance through their work.
The cumulative effect is astounding: Toyota has a market value worth nearly as much as all the other carmakers combined. What’s difficult to understand, though, is what Toyota associates have known all along: their vaunted automobiles and assembly techniques are simply visible outcomes
That is an excerpt from Mathew may's latest manifesto: Elegant thinking.
Matthew E. May is the author of The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation (Free Press, October 2006) from which this manifesto is adapted. He is a longtime Toyota business partner, holding a key advisory role with the University of Toyota for over eight years. As a master Toyota instructor and founder of Los Angeles-based management education firm, Aevitas, he partners with management teams to achieve excellence in innovation, working with a number of well known organizations, including Wells Fargo, The Department of Defense, Quadrant Homes, and Los Angeles Police Department. A graduate of the Wharton School and Johns Hopkins University, he lives with his wife and daughters in southern California, where he is an avid cyclist.
You can read the latest manifesto here.
