Number of words: 146

The essence of the Toyota story is that it is a company with a learning culture. It is a world-class heuristic device, a machine for promoting continuous self-education of the individuals and of the company culture. It first learned how to make mass production work more harmoniously than anywhere else in the world, moving on from the successes and limitations of earlier pioneers such as Henry Ford. It then learned how to turn itself into a multinational company, with a tight focus on succeeding in the biggest and most profitable car market in the world, North America. It did so largely by learning to listen to the heartbeat consumers. The secret of Toyota’s American success lies much in little things. One example is the teams of designers sitting for days on end in supermarket parking lots, studying the way Americans loaded and unloaded their cars. Such assiduous attention is as important as grand strategy. 

Excerpted from Page 135 of ‘Zoom: The Global Race to fuel the car of the future’ by Iain Carson and V Vaitheeswaran