Innovating the Toyota Way

Andrew Willett's team had built a detailed case for an innovation platform. They had examined research workflows, travel, conference attendance and the time people spent on individual tasks. Then COVID arrived. Business travel stopped, events moved online, and several of the savings they had calculated disappeared almost overnight.

The need for the system did not disappear with them. Colleagues working from home now struggled to share information and see what was happening elsewhere in the organization. The business case had to respond to a different working reality.

In this Innovation Rockstars conversation, Willett, Senior Expert at Toyota Motor Europe, explains the work behind that transition. His account connects Toyota's disciplined approach to problem-solving with the practical difficulties of introducing a shared innovation system: establishing boundaries, earning support and helping people change how they work.

A shared language can leave room for new methods

Willett is careful about what the Toyota Way means. The subject could fill several books, he points out, joking that the episode cannot get through the equivalent of The Lord of the Rings. The more specific Toyota business practice provides a structured approach to clarifying problems, investigating causes, testing countermeasures and standardizing what works.

He sees that approach as a shared language across the company. It gives colleagues in different regions a way to understand each other's reasoning. But shared discipline does not mean every new workflow has to begin in exactly the same place.

An exploratory process can start by looking for new trends, for example. A business group can establish that workflow and then assess the effort, outputs and performance of the process it has created. New methods still need accountability, but they do not have to pretend that an unfamiliar field comes with years of historical data.

For innovation leaders, Willett's distinction is useful: established problem-solving methods can help improve an exploratory process without dictating every step of the exploration itself.

Agree what the shared system is for

The platform initiative grew from a change in the team's work. Having previously supported the Japanese side of Toyota extensively, it began directing more innovation activity toward European production. Manufacturing centers were also developing their own networks and opportunities.

That made visibility more important. People needed somewhere to check whether a technology was already being explored and understand what was happening across the region. Similar projects were not automatically a problem, Willett explains, but the overlap and its risks should be visible.

His team wanted a record that could be enriched as new information arrived. They were not trying to absorb every department's specialist work. Detailed powertrain development, cost analysis and other technical activities belonged with the teams responsible for them.

The shared system needed to support information at a level useful across the organization. Database, radar and roadmapping capabilities followed from that intended workflow. The boundary mattered as much as the feature list: colleagues needed a reason to contribute without feeling that another team was taking over their work.

Let stakeholders challenge the proposal

Willett describes a selection and engagement process lasting roughly a year or more. The team brought its initial view of the problems to stakeholders early, including HR, which had an interest in engaging people in innovation.

They studied around 40 software tools, mapped capabilities against their requirements and put the strongest candidates through demanding tests with stakeholders. Demonstrations opened the proposal to criticism as well as support.

The business case went deeper than a feature comparison. Willett recalls more than 1,000 sub-actions in the team's workflow analysis, covering labor, expenses and environmental considerations. They used these to explore different ways a project might be carried out, then selected the arguments most relevant to the organization's priorities.

COVID changed those assumptions. The team had to examine the new difficulty of sharing information among distributed colleagues, alongside the earlier opportunities to reduce unnecessary travel. The episode describes a business case under revision, rather than claiming a fixed return that had already been achieved.

Participation needs permissions and ownership

At the time of the interview, Willett says more than 450 people were in the system. Participation included temporary colleagues, with access configured around the information relevant to their work.

He describes combining ITONICS permissions with existing SharePoint access controls. That allowed people to participate in selected challenges and activities while maintaining appropriate boundaries around information. Inclusion required deliberate configuration, rather than unrestricted visibility.

Engagement also involved building the system with other teams. A core group added examples and learned how it worked. Colleagues from other departments helped develop data models, while nominated people supported adoption in their areas. Willett's team had directly trained more than 150 people.

His warning is unambiguous:

“don't assume that just putting some software there will change behavior.”

The initiative was still a pilot. User feedback, administrative effort and the support needed for a more mature implementation remained part of the evaluation. Wider ownership of administration was a planned next step, not a completed handover.

Look after the part you can influence

Asked to choose between investing in culture and strategy, Willett refuses the neat division. He would invest in a strategy to improve the culture of his own team, where he can make a direct difference.

“this is my garden to look after and to contribute to the whole company's large field.”

That image captures his approach to the platform too. Define the contribution, find collaborators, make the work useful and keep improving it. The opportunity in a large organization comes from connecting capable people around shared interests. Making those connections work takes care long after the software has been selected.