Toyota?s Global Marketing Strategy: Innovation through Breakthrough Thinking and Kaizen

There are many books on the market that discuss the Toyota Production System but few that insightfully analyze its marketing strategy. Authored by former Toyota marketing executives, this is the first book of its kind to detail how Toyota’s thinking habits go beyond the shop floor and influence and guide Toyota’s marketing function.

Toyota has expanded from a venture enterprise to one of the biggest global enterprises because of its innovative mindset (Toyota thinking habits) using Breakthrough Thinking, which supports a new philosophical approach to problem solving, turning 180 degrees away from conventional thinking.

Written by Toyota’s former executive managing director and founder of Breakthrough Thinking, Toyota’s Global Marketing Strategy: Innovation through Breakthrough Thinking and Kaizen:

• Explores Toyota’s "Breakthrough Thinking"
• Examines how Toyota conducts information gathering
• Illustrates how Toyota builds and maintains its unique business culture
• Shows how Toyota "goes to the customer" and comprehensively studies how customers use their products
• Reveals Toyota’s cars have become some of the biggest selling models in the USA

The authors of this book explore Toyota thinking habits as well as Toyota’s global marketing strategy, which, since the 1980s, has been expanding exponentially. The reader will understand the importance of thinking habits in the workplace and will know how to apply them using Toyota as the prime case study.

Shozo Hibino

Dr. Hibino is a seasoned business consultant for a large number of clients including Toyota Motors. He has extensive experience working in a large number of business sectors. He is also professor emeritus with Chukyo University and the Chairman of the Japan Planology Society. His joint work with late Dr. G. Nadler resulted in the extremely popular book Breakthrough Thinking which taught people to change away from their old fashioned reductionist thinking which was initially introduced by René Descartes. Hibino-Nadler’s teachings have since received world-wide attention.

Breakthrough Thinking supports a new philosophical approach to problem solving, turning 180 degrees away from conventional thinking. Its impact on thinking is similar to the impact that Nicolaus Copernicus had on heliocentric theory where he challenged what people used to believe as he moved away from the traditional theory of an earth-centered solar system. Similarly, moving away from René Descartes and his followers who advocated a switch from divine thinking to reductionist thinking, Dr. Nadler and Dr. Hibino advocated that mankind should switch away from reductionist thinking to a new kind of thinking, Breakthrough Thinking.

In our contemporary world, solving one problem often generates another problem in a manner similar to the whack-a-mole arcade game. The result is that the number of problems are growing at a geometric rate making people feel like they are facing a brick wall. Descartes’ shift in the sixteenth century which had called for a thinking shift away from divine thinking brought about confusion. Similarly, in our world today we see growing ‘contradiction and confusion’ in our daily lives. Mankind has come to a stage where a transformation to a new type of thinking is needed.

Koichiro Noguchi helped to write the history at Toyota. Noguchi, started his career at Toyota after completing his university education. He is a genuine Toyota-man equipped with Toyota’s thinking philosophies. He ‘opened new windows,’ during his studies in graduate school at The University of Southern California in the United States. He was dispatched there by Toyota as one of its overseas business staff to learn a new way of thinking. He systematically received specialized knowledge and obtained his MBA. He is the implementer of a global marketing methodology at Toyota which includes hands-on experience working at the joint venture with General Motors. He was involved in the international procurement of parts from different cultures primarily in U.S. He worked in numerous positions within Toyota including sales planning and product planning. He was a former Executive Director and a vice chairman of the Toyota Industries Cooperative.

Gerhard Plenert

Dr. Gerhard Plenert recently joined the Shingo Prize Institute as the Director of Executive Education. This is a faculty position in the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. As a consultant, Dr. Gerhard Plenert has been helping organizations execute operational and supply chain transformations for more than twenty years. Dr. Plenert was also a tenured full professor at California State University, Chico, and a professor at BYU Provo, BYU Hawaii, the University of Malaysia, and the University of San Diego