As to Japanese companies leading in innovation and successful business/manufacturing/etc practices, I will defer to those who are more familiar, but I believe a

As to Japanese companies leading in innovation and successful business/manufacturing/etc practices, I will defer to those who are more familiar, but I believe a big part of it is rigorous frameworks that look at the situation, take a long (LONG) term view, and methodically remove failure points and find ways to reliably achieve success. Patrick has discussed this a number of times, here is a representative quote[0]: "Keep doing this whole "Learn from failure and overcome it" thing for a few decades and you end up the biggest car company in the world and make the competition look like sniveling amateurs." If you want to learn more, look up "Kanban," "Kaizen" (continuous improvement), "5 Whys," or search HN for "patio11 toyota." 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545