Jeffrey Rothfeder > Quotes

“When Congress passes new emission standards, we hire 50 more engineers and GM hires 50 more lawyers.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“space, I think, will give us enough room to tilt the engine sufficiently to get at the camshaft”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“At Honda, it’s sink or swim. They don’t teach you step-by-step; they just throw you into the pool and let you figure it out on your own. If you don’t know how to swim at first, you need to be aggressive to survive. We are to try out whatever we think is necessary to take ourselves to the next level.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“The use of the term Dixie as a nickname for the South was inspired by the popularity throughout the United States of the Louisiana “Dix”, or $10 banknote, issued by New Orleans firms.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

“Criticizing and rejecting ideas and knowledge deemed to be true—inverting conventional wisdom—is more valuable at Honda than repeated success using the same concepts.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“Germany spends about twenty times more on manufacturing R&D than the United States, with much of its money targeted at factory floor activities, such as industrial design and robotics.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“Success,” Honda said, “can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“To satisfy McIlhenny Co.’s need for a steady supply of casks, E.A. signed a deal with Jack Daniels, the Lynchburg, Tennesseee–based whiskey distiller whose roots date back to 1866, a year before Tabasco sauce debuted. Under the agreement, still in existence today, McIlhenny Co. has bought tens of thousands of Jack Daniels’s used barrels, which arrive at Avery Island smelling of hard liquor and charred from years of storing sour mash whiskey.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

“Honda, instead, is driven by a series of grassroots, Eastern-derived principles that emphasize: individual responsibility over corporate mandates; simplicity over complexity; decision making based on observed and verifiable facts, not theories or assumptions; minimalism over waste; a flat organization over an exploding flow chart; autonomous and ad hoc design, development, and manufacturing teams that are nonetheless continuously accountable to one another; perpetual change; unyielding cynicism about what is believed to be the truth; unambiguous goals for employees and suppliers, and the company’s active participation in helping them reach those metrics; and freely borrowing from the past as a bridge to what Honda calls innovative discontinuity in the present.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company

“Honda has been successful because it is, above all, a company that focuses on doing one thing well—making engines that last a long time for cars, motorcycles, and so-called power products like lawn mowers, generators, snowblowers, and weed or garden trimmers.”
― Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company