On building an innovative and entrepreneurial organization, Hisrich and Kearney (2014) advises that gaining competitive advantage should be a central part of an organizations strategy. This will help the body remain innovative to maintain the competitive edge. Six concepts are introduced regarding competitive advantage. They include adapting to external environmental changes, customer drive and focus, and flexible and diverse strategies adaptable to changing client needs. Others are a fast response to rapid changes through taking advantage of surfacing opportunities, exceeding customer needs about competition and engagement in R&D to keep prioritizing development of new products and technologies (Hisrich, & Kearney, 2014). Several successful organizations meet these concepts in different ways to maintain competitive advantage provoking a need to analyze how Toyota meets these concepts.
Toyota remains the most flourishing company in the rapidly growing automotive industry producing top brand vehicles in the World. To adapt to external environmental changes, Toyota’s lean principles ensure adaptability to changes through experimentation which is driven by the available and predicted statistics. This way they can probable changes in external factors and institute mechanisms to respond to the hastily (Bressan, 2014). On customer drive and focus, Toyota operates on a customer and quality first principle. Quality for Toyota means quality cars, sales, and delivery system and quality performance by all employees. It pursues continuous improvement to deliver best brands through research and development (Society, 2014).
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Toyota holds supply strategies and processes that help meet the diverse needs of customers, suppliers, and stakeholders. For stakeholders, Toyota operates under the Japanese cultural values which highly regard hierarchy hence respect and responsibility are upheld. Toyota holds strength as an initiator of innovation where technological development is at the forefront to rhyme with customer propensity and industry drifts to meet the diverse needs of its client. On exceeding the needs of customers to remain on top, Toyota embraces quality and reliability to its delivery system by maintaining close relationships with suppliers. This healthy relationship helps locally analyze client needs and wishes and gain feedback from vendors hence keeping them ahead on meeting customer needs. Toyota leadership emphasizes the need for continuous innovation to keep up with customer growing diverse needs as well as cope with the rapidly growing changes around the industry (Ajit, 2015).
Toyota is actively involved in various activities to maintain its competitive advantage. These include altering their developmental structure through engaging in design and development improvement, making cars in local markets, and structural improvements. Organizational structures are reorganized around chief engineers based closer to consumers through giving them more power in the decision-making process. Among the major R&D initiative for Toyota is the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) Initiative. TNGA is aimed at revolutionizing the development structure by merge design with a plan. Platforms on TNGA will aid in generating new liberties for the cars such as different driving positions and boosting the performance of the vehicles. Research is also continuous on proving new and more advanced models to help maintain a competitive advantage. Toyotas ability to produces new models with better performance levels and functional ability as remain a central point of competitive advantage hence the need for deeper research to maintain the trend (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2012).
In conclusion, Toyotas priority and the primary source of competitive advantage is in meeting its customer demands which are unique and diverse for each customer. It also draws competitive advantage in it well established and brand name based on quality, reliability, and ability to deliver. To remain a top brand and continue enjoying these benefits it has to keep implementing the concepts of competitive advantage and investing in research and development. Otherwise, Toyota has so far been able to apply and meet the ideas, and hence it has consecutively remained a top brand and upheld its competitive advantages.
References
Ajit, K. (2015). Strategic analysis: Toyota. Slide Share . Retrieved on 16 August 2017 from https://www.slideshare.net/AjitKumar162/toyota-strategy.
Bressan, B. (2014). From physics to daily life: Applications in informatics, energy, and environment . Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing.
Hisrich, D. R. & Kearney, C. (2014). Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Society. (2014). Customer first and quality first measures: Toyota global. Sustainability Report . Retrieved on 16 August 2017 from www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/report/archive/sr14/pdf/sr14_05_e.pdf.
Toyota Motor Corporation. (2012). Annual report: Toyota's medium- to long-term growth initiatives. Toyota Global . Retrieved on 16 August 2017 from http://www.toyota-global.com/investors/ir_library/annual/pdf/2012/efforts/.
