Extreme Toyota

Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World's Best Manufacturer

By: Emi Osono, Norihiko Shimizu, Hirotaka Takeuchi

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

To an outsider, Toyota is hard to understand. The company moves forward gradually while also advancing in big leaps. It is frugal with its resources while spending extravagantly on people and projects. It is both efficient and redundant; it cultivates an environment of stability and paranoia; it is hierarchical and bureaucratic, but encourages dissent; it demands that communication be simplified while building complex communication networks. These contradictions are rampant at Toyota because its culture and managers intentionally embrace contradiction, opposites, and paradox.

Granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of Toyota, the authors spent six years researching the company and performing more than 220 interviews with Toyota employees, distributors, and car dealers in order to determine what makes Toyota one of the world's best companies.

Extreme Toyota offers an inside look at the radical contradictions within the company, created by its own management, and how these help Toyota outperform its competition. By putting a premium on creativity and paradoxical thinking as a corporate resource, Toyota has become the best car manufacturer and one of the most successful companies on earth. This audiobook takes a fascinating inside look at what makes Toyota tick.

©2008 Emi Osono, Norihiko Shimizu, and Hirotaka Takeuchi (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

Good overview of Toyota’s culture and management style

Most of the Toyota books I’ve read come from the US perspective, so it’s nice to learn it from the Japanese viewpoint from within the company

Good Insight

insights in this book explain the creative tension and hence innovation Toyota is good at.

Interesting

It was interesting to hear more about the culture of Toyota. The book is good, but does seem to get a bit repetitive. The author uses the same stories to make different points. I still really liked this book.

Redundant

There is some good information in this book. However, this should only be a 90 minute book because it is highly redundant. So much so, I often wondered if I had accidentally hit the button to start at chapter one.