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This study examines the developmental interactions between Japanese senseis (mentors) and early American leaders at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK). More specifically, this study examines why and how these early American leaders transitioned from the initiation phase of a mentor relationship to the active and transforma- tional participation of the cultivation phase. This research identifies characteristics of developmental interactions so that other leaders and mentors can effectively adapt Toyo- ta-style management practices and thinking.

Though the professionalization of Toyota Production Systems (TPS), also known as lean manufacturing, or sim- ply lean, has proven to be vast, the success rate of emula- tion and adaptation of sustained TPS has been low. One of the many problems that organizations face when adapting TPS is executive resistance and misunderstanding of lean management and leadership (Emiliani, 2018; Sherman, 1994). Toyota faced a similar problem of resistance when it hired leaders from other automotive companies into Toyota during the initial years at TMMK. Understanding how Toy- ota overcame this resistance offers insight into better mento- ring for adapting TPS.

This study performs qualitative interviews using oral history and grounded theory techniques. It specifically identifies characteristics of the transition from the initiation to cultivation phases of mentor relationships within TMMK from 1986 to 1992. This research illustrates how leaders who never before experienced the Toyota culture experienced transformation within mentor relationships, which enabled them to adopt Toyota's frame of reference for solving prob-lems and ultimately Toyota's culture. The findings may prove adaptable and beneficial for other leaders and execu- tives adopting TPS.

“Business Adventures remains the best business book I’ve ever read.” —Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur h...

It's easy to get stuck in life...and business...and relationships. In Jolt! Larry Long Jr. helps you get unstuck and back on track to not only discovering your inner greatness, but embracing and living in it wholeheartedly.

Master the art and science of using shameless propaganda for personal and social good.

Influencers have always deployed the power of hype to get what they want. But never in history have people been so susceptible to propaganda and persuasion as they are now. Hype truly runs our world.

Imagine if you could generate and leverage hype for positive purposes—like legitimate business success, helping people, or effecting positive change in your community. Michael F. Schein teaches you how.

In The Hype Handbook, the notorious marketing guru provides 12 fundamental strategies for creating and leveraging hype for good, including ways to:

• • Attract attention from people that matter
  • Create a community of acolytes to further your cause
  • Create an atmosphere of curiosity and intrigue
  • Sell your message with the skill of master
  • Create a step-by-step “manifesto”

    Citing the latest research in psychology, sociology and neuroscience, Schein breaks the concept of hype down into a simple set of strategies, skills, and techniques—and illustrates his methods through stories of the world’s most effective hype artists, including American propagandist Edward Bernays, Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon, celebrity preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, Spartan Race founder Joe De Sena, and digital guru Gary Vaynerchuk.

Whatever your temperament, education, budget, background, or natural ability, The Hype Handbook delivers everything you need to apply the most powerful tools of persuasion for personal and business success.

A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle • Winner of the Porchlight Business Book Award

“A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world . . . With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution.” —TIME Magazine, “TIME100 AI 2025”

“Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times

“Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —Vulture

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

Looking to profitably exit your business?

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