Driving Honda: Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
Written by Jeffrey Rothfeder
Narrated by Mel Foster
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now.
Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world's fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations. What drives the company that keeps creating and improving award-winning and bestselling models like the Civic, Accord, Odyssey, CR-V, and Pilot?
According to Jeffrey Rothfeder, what truly distinguishes Honda from its competitors, especially archrival Toyota, is a deep commitment to a set of unorthodox management tenets. The Honda Way, as insiders call it, is notable for decentralization over corporate control, simplicity over complexity, experimentation over Six Sigma-driven efficiency, and unyielding cynicism toward the status quo and whatever is assumed to be the truth. Honda believes in freely borrowing from the past as a bridge to "innovative discontinuity" in the present. And those are just a few of the ideas that the company's colorful founder, Soichiro Honda, embedded in the DNA of his start-up sixty-five years ago.
As the first journalist allowed behind Honda's infamously private doors, Rothfeder interviewed dozens of executives, engineers, and frontline employees about its management practices and global strategy. He shows how the company has developed and maintained its unmatched culture of innovation, resilience, and flexibility-and how it exported that culture to other countries that are strikingly different from Japan, establishing locally controlled operations in each region where it lays down roots.
For instance, Rothfeder reports on life at a Honda factory in the tiny town of Lincoln, Alabama, and what happened when American workers were trained to follow the Honda Way, as a self-sufficient outpost of the global company. Could they master Honda's three core principles:
Embrace Paradox: Honda encourages respectful disagreement and debate between opposing viewpoints, on matters large and small. New ideas often emerge from conflict.
Real Place, Real Part, Real Knowledge: Honda teaches people to argue using facts, not assumptions. One must go to the factory floor, the showroom, the parking lot, the driver's seat, or the truck bed-whatever it takes-to get the facts and make a decision that can be supported with data.
Respect Individualism: Honda often hires people with unusual backgrounds and independent streaks. It promotes those who question the status quo and who would probably struggle in organizations that focus on rigid rules and systems.
Rothfeder shows how the Alabama plant became a new model for manufacturing in America. It can turn out several different types of cars on any given day and up to 300,000 vehicles and engines a year. Its flexible model enables unparalleled responsiveness to market changes and recovery from mistakes.
As Soichiro Honda himself liked to say, "Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Jeffrey Rothfeder
A former BusinessWeek editor and national editor at Bloomberg News, Jeffrey Rothfeder has written for publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post and has appeared on 20/20, Nightline, Today, Good Morning America, and Oprah. He lives in Cortlandt Manor, New York.
Related to Driving Honda
Related audiobooks
American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ford Tough: Bill Ford and the Battle to Rebuild America's Automaker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel With a Cause Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTotal Competition: Lessons in Strategy from Formula One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Drive: How Manufacturing Will Save Our Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExtreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World's Best Manufacturer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Life and Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bombardier Story: From Snowmobiles to Global Transportation Powerhouse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In-N-Out Burger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Company Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Car Wars: The Rise, the Fall, and the Resurgence of the Electric Car Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Burger King: A Whopper of a Story on Life and Leadership Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Caterpillar Way: Lessons in Leadership, Growth, and Shareholder Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Years With General Motors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invention: A Life of Learning Through Failure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's How We Play the Game: Build a Business. Take a Stand. Make a Difference. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Target Story: How the Iconic Big Box Store Hit the Bullseye and Created an Addictive Retail Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Corporate & Business History For You
Good to Great Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company, Third Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbarians at the Gate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning from It Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Driving Honda
8 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The books goes deep into the culture of Honda and what made it what it is right now, a mix with Japanese culture and local to each factory made Honda among the innovators in the car industry and the biggest combustion engine manufacturer in the world.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very insightful! I now have new found respect for Honda. Thank you!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If you loved your Honda Civic. You will love it even more after reading this book. I did not know Honda focused so much on research. I really appreciate their culture of innovation and efficiency. I think all manufacturers can learn something from Honda's commitment to improvement. The book is a light read. A bit long though. Still enjoyed the book a lot. Too bad that the stock is fairly valued. Will look for dips in the Honda stock :D