I gained a humility that I needed in order to balance my audacity. I wanted to find the smartest people who would disagree with me to try to understand their perspective or to have them stress test my perspective. I wanted to make an idea meritocracy. In other words, not an autocracy in which I would lead and others would follow and not a democracy in which everybody's points of view were equally valued, but I wanted to have an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas would win out.
Akio Toyoda
President of Toyota Motor Corporation, 2009–2023; chairman from 2023
Even I can't predict what kind of car we will be driving 20 years from now, but my time at Babson taught me to embrace change rather than run from it, and I urge all of you to do the same.
Recorded
Babson College Graduate Commencement, Babson College (Babson Thought & Action), 21 May 2019
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