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Patience in Japan

Harvard Business Review

This is one reason why Japanese companies tend to look out for the welfare of their employees in such an effective fashion. Consider the reports of my HBS colleague Hiro Takeuchi, a Japanese national who was working in Tokyo last week when tremors hit the city. The culture of Japan tends to be outer-directed.

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The Secret History of Agile Innovation

Harvard Business Review

Toyota hired Deming to train hundreds of the company’s managers, eventually capitalizing on his expertise to develop the famous Toyota Production System — the primary source of today’s “lean” thinking. Shewhart taught this iterative and incremental-development methodology to his mentee, W.