Well, maybe they might have been slower to innovate in software, but I think a middle way between their conservatism and the free-wheeling ways of Silicon valle

Well, maybe they might have been slower to innovate in software, but I think a middle way between their conservatism and the free-wheeling ways of Silicon valley would have served the industry well. Imagine if software engineering was approached in The Toyota Way[1]. As it is now, software engineering us not respected as real engineering because we neglect to apply general engineering principles. We throw away battle-tested solutions and learnings very few years in favor of shiny brittle toys, in the name of "disruption". I guess the only thing that would change things is something I call some kind of consistent regulation. Too much gate-keeping like in traditional engineering or medical fields can stifle innovation. However, software used by a certain minimum number of users, and software used in certain fields like medicine, transport, finance, need to be subjected by regulatory agencies to certain objective (hence automated?) tests to ensure they meet some minimum reliability, usability, security, and performance requirements. In this regime, small-time SaaS software, or hobby projects, would not need any regulation, but flagship software products of Facebook, Google, SAP, Oracle, Tesla, etc would need it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way