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Prius as an "international business" story

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by ChapmanF, Apr 13, 2015.

  1. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Sooo ... I know this young person who will be starting at Earlham in the fall, and who has been fascinated with things Japanese and studying the language all through high school, and recently told me she might be interested in international business as a major.

    So, says I to myself, what can I think of to give a young Japanophile potential international business student ... and then it hits me. :)

    books.jpg
    ... so she can decide which language she'd rather read, or what she thinks of the translation (the English is a little, ahmm, approximate in spots). But what an example of a very ambitious, very successful, very international collaborative project ... I really like the book as it goes into so many of the interesting areas - leadership, collaboration of diverse teams, designer - engineer interactions, interesting business and marketing demands, last minute snafus, all the good stuff. I also think it's kind of neat that it's a project sort of weirdly contemporaneous with her ... conceived about a year before she was born, with the first Japanese models sold when she was about 1, and the US model when she was 4 or 5, and she's quite familiar with the end product, having known me and my Gen 1 for several years.

    We'll just have to see whether she thinks any of that is neat, or just boring Chapthink....

    I had never seen the Japanese version up close until it arrived today. It's got some photos in it that aren't included in the translation. Most of them are nothing to write home about, just marketing shots of the car, but there are a couple that must be key people on the project. I don't know who any of them are. I'm sure the captions identify them, but that doesn't help me much.

    -Chap
    prigrp.jpg
    prideb.jpg
     
    ftl likes this.
  2. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
    Staff Member

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    From left to right in the first photo:

    1 .Takeshi Uchiyamada
    2. ?
    3. ?
    4. Toshiharu Ishida
    5. Satoshi Ogiso
     
  3. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    Looks like they are not smiling yet...had no idea if this thing was going to "fly"