A couple of years ago, I wrote about 3D printers transforming manufacturing and distribution. I can add healthcare to that list. In one of its always-excellent science and technology articles, The Economist tells us that researchers are using 3D printers to produce replacement body parts:
Organovo’s 3D bio-printer works in a similar way to some rapid-prototyping machines used in industry to make parts and mechanically functioning models. These work like inkjet printers, but with a third dimension. Such printers deposit droplets of polymer which fuse together to form a structure. With each pass of the printing heads, the base on which the object is being made moves down a notch. In this way, little by little, the object takes shape. Voids in the structure and complex shapes are supported by printing a “scaffold” of water-soluble material. Once the object is complete, the scaffold is washed away.Researchers have found that something similar can be done with biological materials. When small clusters of cells are placed next to each other they flow together, fuse and organise themselves. Various techniques are being explored to condition the cells to mature into functioning body parts…
The raw material is grown in cultures from patient tissue samples, avoiding transplant rejection.
To start with, only simple tissues, such as skin, muscle and short stretches of blood vessels, will be made… Within five years, once clinical trials are complete, the printers will produce blood vessels for use as grafts in bypass surgery. With more research it should be possible to produce bigger, more complex body parts. Because the machines have the ability to make branched tubes, the technology could, for example, be used to create the networks of blood vessels needed to sustain larger printed organs, like kidneys, livers and hearts.
In case you think this is fantasy, the scaffold technique is already used to grow replacement bladders. Marrying the medical technique with 3D printing was a logical next step.Although the implications for healthcare are immense, I suspect that “appearance surgery” will eagerly adopt this technology. Replacement scalps complete with hair follicles will sell well, as will wrinkle-free, age-spotless skin. The mind boggles at what could be possible in the long term. Maybe those spam ads for enlarged male appendages might finally have something to offer that works! And who knows how competitive sportspeople will use this?
You’ve got just two weeks left to enter the 2010 New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards. Even if you’re not an entrant, reward and encourage your team by booking a table at the Awards Dinner - it’s a great party (in Auckland this year on 7 May).
Once again, I’m a judge; it’s always inspiring to read the entries and interview the finalists. This year’s categories are:
PricewaterhouseCoopers Hi-Tech Company of the Year
NZX Emerging Hi-Tech Company of the Year
HiFx Innovative Service Product of the Year
Duncan Cotterill Innovative Software Product of the Year
Dell Innovative Hardware Product of the Year
International Business Wales Hi-Tech Exporter of the Year
Do you ever shout at the TV, radio or newspaper when a reporter or vested interest representative quotes some superficial statistics and draws completely wrong conclusions. With increasing age, I seem to be doing this more often! This problem isn’t confined to the media. Misinterpreting simplistic numbers because of poor qualitative knowledge is a common business mistake.
I’ve often warned people about this risk, but I often wished I had a simple example to illustrate the problem. Thanks to Tim Harford I’ve now got one. Britain’s Daily Mail shouted this headline:
Cracked it! Woman finds six double yolk eggs in one box beating trillion-to-one odds
The Daily Mail reported a woman’s astonishment at cracking six eggs to find them all double-yolked. If the odds of a hen laying an egg with a double yolk is 1 in 1000, the Mail argues, superficially correct, then the chance of two consecutive eggs being double-yolked is 1 in a thousand thousand, and so on, meaning the odds of all six eggs in the carton being double-yoked is 1 in 1 trillion in traditional British nomenclature (quintillion if you use the more prevalent American scale). The report sparked a flurry of paid media and social media comment on the phenomenon. Some people argued that the statistics must be wrong, because they’d also, and more than once, bought cartons full of double-yolk eggs. This kicked off speculation on a variety of causes, eg. flock genetics - extremely unlikely given the way the egg industry operates (high volume hatcheries are separate from production farms).
The answer is more prosaic. Egg industry workers can spot double-yolk eggs by handling, and put them aside for themselves. If, due to normal statistical variation, they collect too many, the excess eggs tend to be put back into the packing process together.
Good designers don’t just rely on statistics. They observe what really goes on. Toyota uses a technique called “standing in the circle” - literally drawing a circle on the ground and standing in it for hours, silently observing what goes on during a production process and then asking the workers why they did what they did. (That requires mutual trust and shared desire for knowledge and improvement). Before and after designing a new visitor experience, Click Suite’s interactive media designers watch what people do without comment, and then seek explanations.
Too many people use superficial statistics without knowledge of the underlying situation. They make business decisions based on false premises. As Alexander Pope once wrote in “An Essay on Criticism” (1709):
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
But remember, in business as in life, you can’t make an omelette without cracking some eggs!
One of my best reads this summertime had the somewhat dry title “The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.“ Don’t be put off. Written by Robert Allen, Professor of Economic History at Oxford University, it’s a very readable* and convincing account of why the Industrial Revolution happened in 18th-century Britain, rather than anywhere else. Allen discounts any notions that Britons were superior entrepreneurs or innovators; indeed, other countries enjoyed similar advances in science, education, institutions and commerce. Instead, after setting the scene with societal and economic developments in the 16th and 17th centuries, Allen points to some primary factors which came together only in Britain and nowhere else:
The highest wages in the world (thanks to the Black Death and its effects on British society).
An abundance of cheap energy from coal (albeit not very useful initially, but developed to supply growing city populations).
Ample supplies of iron ore close to that coal.
Those factor conditions did not come together anywhere else, and so there were not the incentives and rewards for creating the wave of technological and business innovation that transformed Britain (and later the world). Allen also shows that the state played very little distinctive role in the British transformation. It was the cumulative efforts of individual entrepreneurs, engineers and other innovators addressing real business problems and opportunities which, because they were common in Britain, also generated classic cluster effects.
While interesting in its own right, Allen’s book reinforced for me much of what is wrong with current economic development thinking. All we seem to hear is more education, more science, more infrastructure, less regulation, less tax, and so on. All well and good (at least up to a point) but these are me-too strategies. Everyone else is following them, more or less. Me-too economies can’t make the step-change that Britain achieved in the 18th century (and sustained for 200 years).
The questions I think business innovators should examine are not only “What do we do to sustain and grow the industries we already have?” but also “What unique un-addressed problems and opportunities do we have which, if resolved, will enable us to build new unique and sustainable global competitive advantage?” And for policy-makers, “Will you adjust your economic development mechanisms to support those new initiatives?”
I can think of at least a couple of significant problem/opportunity combinations where New Zealand could build global leadership. Know anyone with some serious spare investment dollars?
*For those wanting data and/or academic references, Allen provides plenty, but they don’t get in the way.
I was an early investor in Surveylab, which makes the ikeGPS range of professional hand-held data-capture devices. Their point of difference is that they capture the image and location of an object from a distance, unlike most GPS devices which only tell you where you are. Applications are manifold, in network industries like electricity and telecommunications, in environmental agencies like the US Parks Services, and in military applications such as UN post-war reconstruction. Sales are primarily B2B, either direct or via their major distribution partner in the US. Founder Leon Toorenburg is looking for someone to take on the global marketing role, with a particular emphasis on internet-enabled sales. The business is VC-funded, with another funding round being completed as I write. So if you or someone you know is interested in the job, take at look at the ad on Seek or TradeMe.
Last week’s Economist lists the world’s biggest corporate R&D spenders, drawn from an EU report on the top 1000 EU-headquartered companies and the top 1000 non-EU companies Those numbers are eye-wateringly huge, but I do seriously wonder about bang-per-buck (or should that be eruption-per-euro?)
Know anyone who wants to play a big role in a new web business in Wellington, NZ? Get them to look at this. Some people I know are planning to build an international business-to-business on-line marketplace for clients and providers of a specialist business service. I’ve had a look at what they’re planning and it’s very promising; probably the best web business idea I’ve seen recently (locally). The market is truly international in scale and scope. However, while these guys really know their services market, they freely admit they know little about building and operating an on-line marketplace. They’re looking for 3 key people to join them in the start-up team:
The CEO: someone who knows how to build a web business, build and lead the team and operational processes, drive the strategy and international marketing push. Excellent English language written and spoken communication skills. Proficiency in another major European or Asian language would be useful, but not essential.
Head of development: Leadership experience in Agile web-business application development. Knowledge of on-line payments, cloud-based infrastructure, etc.. Good understanding of customer-centred product management and design.
The business could also use the occasional services of someone who understands (at a business level) cross-border payments; maybe consult, maybe part-time, maybe advisory board.
So if you, or someone you know, want to put yourself on the line with all the challenges and potential rewards of a start-up business, please email me with a short pitch on what you have to offer. Those wanting a big salary, fancy offices, hordes of staff, regular hours and business class travel should not apply!
PS: Thanks in advance for any links from bloggers and twitterers.
Postscript: My graphic seems to have caught people’s attention. In technology businesses, I often joke that the best way to get the sales team’s focus onto a product is to not release it for ages, and then immediately withdraw it!
Exporters are lauded locally in most countries; but when they start establishing offshore operations in manufacturing or product development, they are quickly castigated for doing so. The critics have a very naive and short-sighted view. For over a decade, I’ve been arguing that exports are not enough:
The world’s most successful companies do not just export globally - they operate globally. That means having sales, service, logistics, production and development operating around the world. Look at the world’s greatest companies. How many do things only at home to ship out to the rest of the world? I can only think of one - Boeing. The others made the leap from exporting to international operations…. To minimise the cost of distance - freight, duties, foreign exchange risk and in-transit inventory; to reduce production costs, through greater volumes, lower material costs and lower manufacturing wages (an unpleasant reality); to get closer to customers for more efficient service and faster reaction to changing needs; to build critical mass for future investment; and to build credibility with large global customers.
I’m glad to hear, via The Independent’s Nikki Mandow, that others are pushing the same message. At the Export New Zealand-organised Go Global conference in Auckland today, Jonathan Ling (the head of corporate heavyweight Fletcher Building) surprised many of those present by arguing that lifting the country’s outbound foreign direct investment is essential for future economic prosperity. Despite some problems, overall Fletcher attributes enormous benefits to its offshore activities. On a smaller scale, others report similar nett gains. Even the government is getting the message, with more equitable tax arrangements for offshore direct investment.
Here’s why I think it’s a good idea for countries to encourage outbound foreign direct investment:
Global companies like Nokia, Vodafone, and Nestlé operate in many countries. The interesting thing is that large numbers of their high-value jobs are still at home- in development, marketing, and corporate administration. They are surrounded at home by a plethora of supporting organisations- in banking, IT, law, accounting, advertising, travel, short-run early-stage manufacturing, research, education, etc. Together, they bring home huge revenue and profit streams.
If New Zealand wants a high-value economy, it needs more than just exporters. It needs global businesses that operate offshore in all facets of their business. New Zealand should encourage its businesses to invest offshore, not deride them for it. Without global operations, we won’t get a Kiwi Nokia or Vodafone. With global operations, we look like getting a Kiwi Nestlé. We could sure do with some more.
The alternative is to repeatedly build small niche businesses and sell them off for a few million dollars; great for the founders, but not a sustainable and substantial national economic strategy.
When I was a kid, “Made in Japan” was a synonym for cheap shoddy knock-offs of Western products; but over time “Made in Japan” came to mean “lifetime quality” and “extras included“. So the sneering changed: “Japanese only copy; they can’t innovate.“ Yet many of today’s smart design and manufacturing processes are modelled on techniques the Japanese developed. Ah, those ideas already existed before the Japanese adopted them, I hear you say. In nascent form, maybe; but every new idea is built on what has gone before. Anyway, the sustained dominance of Japanese firms in manufactured products from consumer electronics to industrial machinery demonstrates a highly innovative environment, not just in processes and product refinement. Much innovation in cars today comes from technologies pioneered in Japan.
I hear similar dismissive language applied to China now. There’s even less basis for such myopia. Both nations had strong education systems and huge desire for economic change. China has a much deeper tradition of engineering and manufacturing. It’s a theme Eric Drexler has touched on in a guest article for McKinsey on innovation:
To become a world-class center of technological innovation, a society must have three basic elements:
• drive—a culture that supports change and hungers for it
• human capital—the personal abilities that make world-class technology possible
• a capacity for mobilization—a society’s ability to pursue ambitious new goals
These basic elements are more fundamental than any current performance metric or economic trend, and they are durable.
China has all these in abundance. I was particularly struck by Drexler’s comment on China’s mobilization capacity:
Drive and human capital are applied through organization, by both entrepreneurs and corporations, as well as national leaders and governments. India has been outstanding in its incapacity for reform and for interfering with entrepreneurship, though this is changing. China, however, has been outstanding in its capacity for learning from experience, radically transforming government policy, and unleashing a hyperentrepreneurial business culture.
As science and technology grow in importance, it becomes increasingly important for leaders to have a good understanding of these disciplines. Among US legislators, though, a background in science and engineering is exceedingly rare. In France, it is common. In Taiwan, many legislators have doctoral degrees in science or engineering. In China, of the nine members of the standing committee of the Politburo (the ruling body, which includes the president, the vice president, and the premier), one recently appointed member has an education in law. Previously, all nine had been trained as engineers.
… Perhaps the most robust indicator of change in the distribution of innovation potential is a change in the distribution of corporate research laboratories. Companies are opening new labs in China at an astounding rate. In software and electronics, NEC, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, and Microsoft all have established R&D centers in China; in pharmaceuticals, Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Eli Lilly have done so. This list is not exhaustive.
Despite this, many firms (and nations) are myopic about new competition from other countries. Do you think they’re more realistic about competitors in the same region or city as themselves? Sadly, no. Even with familiar competitors, firms kid themselves with smug self-affirming generalisations.
Don’t get freaked out by competitors, local or global; but don’t fool yourself with uninformed complacency. Otherwise, you’re just making your competitor’s job easier.
Technology trends researcher Gartner has published its 2009 Hype Cycle Report. This attempts to place technology developments onto what it calls the “Hype Cycle”, a wavelike progression over expectations over time:
Technology trigger
Peak of inflated expectations
Trough of disillusionment
Slope of enlightenment
Plateau of productivity
Here are some of Gartner’s views on four “hot” technologies at the “peak of inflated expectations”
Cloud Computing. … The levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.
E-Book Readers. … the devices still suffer from proprietary file formats and digital rights management technologies, which along with price, are limiting their adoption and will drive them into the Trough of Disillusionment.
Social Software Suites. … Within businesses, there is strong and rapidly growing evidence of experimentation and early production deployments… Disillusionment is … based on the realization that … much work must be done to build an effective social software deployment.
Microblogging. … Twitter … exploded in popularity … inevitable disillusionment around “channel pollution” is beginning. As microblogging becomes a standard feature …, it is earning its place alongside other channels (for example, e-mail, blogging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges.
Meanwhile, RFID (wireless product tagging) is at the bottom of the “trough of disillusionment”, and mobile payments technology is just emerging from it to begin climbing the “slope of enlightenment”.
One thing I’ve particularly enjoyed about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing has been watching reruns of the Tom Hanks-produced docudrama series “From the Earth to the Moon“. When I saw the series for the first time in 1998, I was enthralled. My particular favourite is the episode on the development of the lunar lander. The day after I saw it, I got one of my staff to beg, steal or borrow a videotape copy from the local TV broadcaster (it hadn’t been released for sale). We showed it to all our development staff as part of a training day. Everyone who aspires to a career in engineering (of any kind), product development, or project management should watch these programmes. If you’ve got a teenager in your family who’s thinking about a career along these lines, the DVD set would make a great and inexpensive gift (just make sure you get the right regional format or have a multi-region capable player).
Over at The Technium, Kevin Kelly asks “Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?” You’ll recall that Moore’s Law predicts a doubling of transistor numbers in an integrated circuit chip every two years, and it has held astonishing true for nearly 50 years. Fulfilling this “law” has been a key driver in the astonishing growth of computer power accompanied by falls in the cost of that power. Kelly explores whether Moore’s Law simply sets a target which engineers strive to achieve (2 years does match neatly with typical product development cycles), or if there is some other deeper factor, and extrapolates this to a variety of technologies.
I was struck by Kelly’s observation that most current new technologies have gained momentum from smallness:
The first thing to notice is that all these examples demonstrate the effects of scaling down, or working with the small. In this microcosmic realm energy is not very important. We don’t see exponential improvement in efforts to scale up, to keep getting bigger, skyscrapers and space stations. Airplanes aren’t getting bigger, flying faster, and more fuel efficient at an exponential rate. Gordon Moore jokes that if the technology of air travel experienced the same kind of progress as Intel chips, a modern day commercial aircraft would cost $500, circle the earth in 20 minutes, and only use five gallons of fuel for the trip. However, the plane would only be the size of a shoebox! We don’t see a Moore’s Law-type of progress at work while scaling up because energy needs scale up just as fast, and energy is a major limited constraint, unlike information. So our entire new economy is built around technologies that scale down well — photons, electrons, bits, pixels, frequencies, and genes. As these inventions miniaturize, they reach closer to bare atoms, raw bits, and the essence of matter and information. And so the fixed and inevitable path of their progress derives from this elemental essence.
At antenna manufacturer Deltec, we were frequently asked why our unit costs didn’t fall as fast as the electronic subsystems in mobile communications infrastructure. While we did achieve cost savings from smarter design, leaner manufacturing and experience/scale effects, the laws of physics imposed limits on what could be achieved in a shaped piece of metal whose minimum size was determined by the frequency/wavelength and performance requirements of the network design and cellsite coverage. Smallness only came from shorter wavelengths/higher frequencies or lower range/coverage (increasing the number of cellsites).
Kelly also unearthed this old chart from the US Air Force. Impulse power, Mr Sulu! You’re due about now.
I held off saying anything about the 40th anniversary of the first moon-walk because I had nothing to add beyond the usual awestruck adolescent wonderment of the time (which hasn’t diminished, by the way). Fortunately, UK IT commentator Richard Holway reminded me of something that is very relevant in my own career track:
The computer in Apollo 11 had just 64K of RAM. It seems amazing when we’ve now even stopped talking about megabytes in favour of gigabytes. In 1969 though, much of my programming was still in assembler code and I was expert in reading the holes in punched cards. I worried constantly about saving a bit here and a bit there. This was when dumping the ‘19’ bit from ddmmyy was common - and thus was born the Y2K bug!
My thoughts today are not about ‘Wow, look how far we have progressed in 40 years’ . It is more a wonderment that mankind could achieve a mission to the moon armed with such seemingly archaic tools. Truly incredible.
Indeed!
Just 3 years after the 1st moon landing, I wrote a complete business application - orders, inventory, billing, accounting, etc. - to run on an ICL 1901A with 8kb of RAM and 2×4Mb of exchangeable disk drive storage, written in NICOL (ICL’s version of RPG1, taught to me by David Nicholson, one of my oldest friends, who by happenstance ended up in Wellington NZ a few months before me and is still here). I was a dab hand with the old 3-finger card punch too!
Ever wondered what colour you are? Rick Smith, author of career-planning book “The Leap“, has made an online personality testing tool available. It explores 3 facets of your persona - leadership, curiosity and execution - and plots them on a 3-sided chart with different shades of green, red and blue. You’re placed in a colour zone, which is “your primary colour”. There’s a further set of questions to test if your current role fits your personality.
I’m not convinced that the questions are discriminating enough to give accurate and consistent interpretations - I could have made equally valid different responses to several questions - but it seems harmless enough, and could be fun to do at home or with your mates. Before you ask, I was assessed as “blue velvet” (top line, centre right). Make what you will of that.
Regular readers will know that I’m an admirer of Toyota, in particular its lean thinking and unity of purpose. This is not unconditional admiration. Toyota can be bureaucratic; its brand marketing is usually uninspired me-too (the NZ emotive campaigns in the ’80s and ’90s being rare exceptions); and its designs are worthy rather than exciting. However, I’m quibbling; that worthiness has helped Toyota climb from humble beginnings to overhaul the once-mighty General Motors as the world’s No. 1 auto-maker.
Toyota is renowned for incredibly flexible and efficient manufacturing, with a ruthless attention to eliminating waste in all its forms (rework, shoddy materials, unnecessary movement, set-up time, inventory, and so on). But, according to a Bloomberg-sourced article appearing in major newspapers, as Toyota started to close on GM over the last decade, Toyota has been more driven by numbers. It started to build inflexible single-purpose manufacturing plants, not training its people properly, and operating these new plants in a very un-Toyota way. Toyota recently reported its first operating losses since 1950, and has suspended production in many plants. Blame can be partly ascribed to the global recession, but that just exaggerated these other problems.
I usually take such journalistic analyses of companies with a large pinch of salt, but this story passes my “gut feel” credibility test. It isn’t a story of a company being stuck in a mindset that no longer works. That’s the GM problem. No, this is a story, if true, of being blinded by success, of losing sight of what made Toyota great.
However, Toyota’s leadership is onto the problem. After the numbers went wrong, Toyota’s honorary chairman and founding family figurehead, Shoichiro Toyoda gave a stinging rebuke to the company’s top 400 executives. The company has a big job on its hands, although not as big as that facing Bill Ford 10 years ago when he took over the helm at the business founded by his great-grandfather. Unlike Chrysler and GM, Ford’s award-winning product range, operational methods and funding management have enabled it to avoid bankruptcy. That precedent did not go unheeded by Toyota’s board. New CEO Akio Toyoda, a car nut like Bill Ford, is the grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. He is steeped in the Toyota credo. Expect a back-to-basics Toyota in future, although maybe with a little more excitement added to the mix.
First it was the XF, and now the new XJ. Jaguar is getting its style smarts back. I hope what’s underneath lives up to the exterior. Vista Group compadre Jack Yan was first with this official picture at his fashion magazine Lucire:
How’s this for a new slant (literally) on a product? Idealog magazine features the Thinair 102, a small scale wind turbine from Powerhouse Wind. It’s innovative in several ways, most notably using a single blade, rather than 2 or 3, saving weight and reducing noise. I like how they solve a major operational hazard for wind turbines; when the wind gets too strong, the blade parks itself horizontally. Now that’s novel thinking.
Paul Quickenden cautions aspiring entrants to the software-as-a-service industry against trying to match the functionally-rich features of their competitors (which include both on-premise software vendors and established SaaS players). It’s good advice for any innovator, no matter what industry. So I’m unashamedly stealing it for you.
Classic strategic thinking (originally military, but also applicable to business) says that unless you have overwhelming force, you don’t attack your opponent where he or she is strongest. Instead you attack where they are weak or not paying enough attention. Or look for an unserved related market or unsolved related problem which the incumbent ignores or is spurned by.
Clayton Christensen wrote a deservedly acclaimed best-selling book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, to explain how weak new entrants overcome much stronger incumbents. It’s well worth reading. If you haven’t got the time, here’s Paul Quickenden’s synopsis:
There is an incumbent business model.
These incumbents enter into a cycle (arms race even) of continually adding features to their products in an attempt to keep adding value to the clients, and hence maintain their pricing.
The cycle continues until you get to a point where the products are over spec’d compared to client NEEDS or even requirements, and accordingly over priced.
Then someone finds or offers an alternate product or delivery method, which is much cheaper and actually more suited to the clients real needs.
The incumbents, talk to their clients (who have sunk investments and a political agenda to support their buying decisions) who say they aren’t interested in this new product approach etc. The incumbents completely miss the new trend, because hey…the customer base aren’t asking for it.
The disrupter gains a foothold in a niche part of the market, gets scale over time and eventually becomes acceptable to the mainstream. They then enter the arms race cycle (they are the new incumbents), while the old incumbents struggle belatedly to meet the market.
Watching a bird in flight, you can’t help but be struck by the elegance of its design. For centuries, designers have tried to replicate not just the adjustable wing, but also the propulsive and flight control dynamics of birds. Bird-like dynamics have always been an impossible dream, at least until now. Wired magazine reports on a humming-bird robot prototype that may finally crack the problem. The video clip below shows how much has been achieved by US firm AeroVironment in less than 2 years, starting with a clumsy hovering device and evolving to something increasingly evocative of a real humming-bird. The firm has just been awarded further US-government funding to continue its development.
The progression reminds me of the early stage of many other product developments - extremely clumsy early prototypes, yet showing the promise to evolve into workable fit-for-purpose designs, which will continue to evolve with each new generation of product release and underlying design platform. If you haven’t ever been part of such a project, add it to the list of things you should try. It’s a fascinating experience, full of challenge, disappointment and excitement. A bit like a young bird learning to fly.
We’re still a long way from emulating the flight of an eagle, but that engineering dream doesn’t seem so impossible now.
Regular readers will know that I’m an admirer of Toyota, in particular its lean thinking and unity of purpose. This is not unconditional admiration. Toyota can be bureaucratic; its brand marketing is usually uninspired me-too (the NZ emotive campaigns in the ’80s and ’90s being rare exceptions); and its designs are worthy rather than exciting. However, I’m quibbling; that worthiness has helped Toyota climb from humble beginnings to overhaul the once-mighty General Motors as the world’s No. 1 auto-maker.
