What is Learning-First Product Development?

While Toyota's product development effectiveness and the resultant bottom-line success makes for a dramatic call for change, choosing to simply copy Toyota processes, techniques, and the four cornerstones identified in Mike's book is not too workable. The changes are huge, making a wholescale changeover too dramatic to be feasible in most any organization. However, the changed processes and techniques are also highly inter-dependent, making it unclear that the changes can be successfully deployed in pieces. Finally, it is not entirely clear that copying Toyota is even wise. Care must be taken not to lose what you currently do well! Possibly even better than Toyota can do.

We wrestled with that issue for years, trying to dive down to the essential elements and thinking that drives Toyota to behave as it does, such that we can apply that thinking to non-Toyota companies, and come up with behaviors that are appropriate for that company's business, but give performance advantages comparable to (or beyond) Toyota.

Learning-First Product Development is the name we have given to those essential ingredients that separate Toyota Product Development from the rest of the world. A sampling of those essential elements:

• No guessing; if you don't know, then do the testing to learn it first.
• Go Look and see for yourself
• 5-Why Analysis; 5-So-What Analysis
• Rich, science-based modeling of the situation / problem / solution
• Consensus decision-making; Socratic mentoring
• Tayloristic management replaced by Socratic management
• Concise, rigorous communication to facilitate all of the above

If you'd like to learn more, we offer both books and seminars to take you to much greater detail.