The book that changed the world?

How did Toyota come to develop such a unique, high-performing culture that is benchmarked throughout the world? In some ways its collectivist culture seems very Japanese. Yet, other aspects of the culture can be uniquely attributed to Toyota. While many Japanese companies focused on internal excellence with little international influence, Toyota continues to grow as a global powerhouse. There is a culture of politeness in Japan yet Toyota Production System founder Taichi Ohno was anything but polite and political. The sheer will and determination of Toyota’s Chief Engineers to create outstanding products – above and beyond the current best – is legendary (Morgan and Liker, 2006). While other Japanese companies are generally driven from the top down, Toyota finds a balance between top down and bottom up, revering the team members who directly add value to the product. Even the obsession with kaizen, something seemingly common in Japan, is sensational at Toyota. Much of Toyota leaders’ entrepreneurial spirit, sheer determination, unwavering belief in what is possible, and intensity in developing people can be traced back to founder Sakichi Toyoda – who dedicated his life to contributing to society by developing the first fully-automatic loom.

Each of the authors has independently written about the influence Samuel Smiles’ book Self-Help (1859) had on Sakichi Toyoda, and by implication on Toyota, and consequently the Lean world (Hines, 2022; Liker, 2020; Powell, 2024). The subject has also been addressed by other commentators such as Magee (2007) and Ballé (2019). This importance has been echoed by public domain documents from Toyota (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2006) and the fact that Sakichi Toyoda’s personal copy was put on display at his birth home ^[1]. However, each report is fleeting and lacking in detail.

References to the book are absent from the commentary of notable early histories of Lean which tend to start their accounts in the twentieth century and focus on the technical aspects, particularly the Toyota Production System (Holweg, 2007; Roser, 2016). However, as many have argued, the success of Toyota is in how they respect and develop people and create a focus on a human-centred culture (Magee, 2007; Liker and Hoseus, 2008). These are exactly the topics addressed by Smiles. Indeed, as Smiles notes “the spirit of Self-Help is the genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength” (Smiles, 1897^[2], pp. 10).

We like others have been fascinated by the question of how Toyota’s unique culture came to be. And the book Self-Help seems to be an unappreciated influence that could explain a lot. Was this indeed the book that changed the world?

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) was born in Haddington, Scotland and studied medicine, later becoming a doctor and subsequently a surgeon. Thereafter, he turned to journalism and edited the radical newspaper The Leeds Times which argued for such causes as women’s suffrage, antisocial privilege and parliamentary reform where he endorsed several aspects of the Chartist position (infed.org, 2009). He became more liberal and resigned from the Leeds Times in 1842 and undertook public lectures and writing, with his first significant work being a posthumous biography of his friend George Stephenson, the famous railway engineer (Smiles, 1857).

Self-Help was a collection of his lectures that he gave to a self-improvement group of around 100 young working men in Leeds (Petzold, 2009). It is an eclectic mix of wisdom derived from modern, classical and religious texts, as well as a wide range of biographical information from prominent figures and also some people with much more ordinary lives (Wenham, 2015). At this point of time Britain was established as the first industrial economy. However, for the predominantly working-class population life was hard with the hierarchical society had preventing easy climbing of the social ladder. It was a time when the gap between the rich and the poor was very wide. Those few who benefitted from expensive schooling dominated the higher echelons of society when there was no universal compulsory schooling.

Self-Help placed 1859 as the year when Britain emerged from the religious interpretation of the world to a secular one (Petzold, 2009). Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” (Darwin, 1859) was published on the same day. Smiles’ Self-Help reflected the spirit of the age and became second only to the Bible in Victorian homes (Butler-Bowden, 2024) and was indeed called the Victorian gospel for inspiration and guidance (Petzold, 2009). It had sold over 250,000 copies in Britain by Smiles death in 1904 and many more globally.

The main thesis of the book revolved around the fact that individuals were responsible for their own success; that perseverance was key; and that one should seek self-improvement and practical learning, to achieve their goals. It extols the virtues of good character, self-discipline, personal duty and self-control. Smiles’ focus was not on people becoming rich but more on them realising their potential and contributing to society. His stories of the world’s best inventors emphasised that they were ordinary people who had extraordinary commitment to a vision and perseverance to pursue it tirelessly. He said that even poor people born into the working class can be successful if they work in a disciplined way to improve themselves. If individuals pursue excellence en masse, society can improve, as “national progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 11).

The book was written at a time when the rigid social and economic stratification of society was starting to loosen and it was less necessary to have money to make money. In particular, it was possible for men (there are few examples of women) to improve their stature through some mechanical invention or by developing a manufacturing technique. He shows many examples from the famous, such as Richard Arkwright, Isaac Newton and George Stephenson as well as numerous unknowns, “even the humblest person, who sets before his fellows an example of industry, sobriety and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a future influence upon the well-being of his country” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 12).

It has many well-known, if slightly misquoted, references such as: “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse”, “where there is a will there is a way” and “necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty” (Smiles, 1897, pp, 158, 111 and 64).

The book was not only influential in Britain but also abroad as it was translated into Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, German, various Indian languages, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Turkish. In the preface to the 1880 edition, Smiles noted that it had been more widely published and read in America than Britain. One of the major influences it had, particularly in America is that it became the catalyst for the self-improvement and wellness movements. The ideas from Self-Help can be seen very clearly, for instance, in the work of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (Carnegie, 1936), Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” (Hill, 1937) and Steven Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” (Covey, 1989).

It also preluded by over a century the positive thinking genre stemming from the work of Carol Dweck (Dweck and Leggett, 1988). In this spirit, Smiles (1987, pp. 183) wrote:

Smiles further argued that this positive, productive habit necessarily meant focusing outward and helping others as illustrated by the outward mindset movement typified by the Arbinger Institute (2016); “the duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbours” (Smiles, 1859, pp. 3).

Self-Help arguably had its biggest impact in Japan, where it was translated by Masanao Nakamura as Saigoku Rishi Hen – Genmei Jojoren (The Western Countries’ Book of Successful Careers, Smiles, 1871) after visiting Britain. At this time, Britain was the first industrial power and a natural place for other industrialising nations to look to. The book helped form the spirit of “new Japan” as it was published in Japan at a time when the country was emerging from a feudal era dominated by the samurai elite with the arrival of Meiji Restoration in 1868. It became the gospel of this new age (Nakajima, 2007) selling over a million copies in Japan in the 19th century and was more influential on young men than any other book of the day and taken more seriously (Culin, 1919). It struck a chord with the Japanese reformers as they sought a similar social and economic revolution as had happened in Britain.

The emphasis was much on the idea of shuyo (self-cultivation) and to grow and become the person you should be, a theme that is still to the fore even today in Japan (Ayako, 2021). In 1872, Self-Help was adopted as a school textbook (Yu, 2026) and became like a bible for Meiji youth.

Sakichi Toyoda was one such youth. He was born in Yamaguchi, Shizuoka Province in 1867, the same year as Yoshinobu Tokugawa submitted his resignation as the last shogun (Toyota Global, 2026). His family was poor and his father, Ikichi, was a farmer and carpenter and his mother, Ei, made a living from farming and weaving. He left elementary school in 1877 and never really took upper secondary school seriously, preferring to learn carpentry from his father (Kaneko et al., 2021). He was strongly influenced by his father who was a craftsman with a strong sense of ethics and responsibility (Takehara and Hasegawa, 2020). He was closer to his mother and he had a strong empathy towards the hard work that she and other women in the community did with the inefficient hand looms of the day “working their fingers to the bone” as Sakichi Toyoda said.

His father was a devout believer in Nichiren Buddhism which taught its followers to fulfil their duties and all work assigned to them, to strive to return kindness and benefit to those who gave it and serve others. In many ways this was similar to the Calvinist upbringing that Samuel Smiles had with his family’s deep roots in the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Nichiren Buddhism, which is based on the teachings of the Buddhist priest Nichiren (1222–1282), focuses on faith, practice (i.e. actions) and study (i.e. education). Hence, Smiles’ statement of “heaven helps those who help themselves” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 10) struck a chord in Japan and was elevated to the front cover of the Japanese translation. One of the unusual features of the religion was that of his 162 original followers, 47 were women and many of Nichiren’s writings were to women in which he shows a strong empathy for their struggles (Mori, 2003).

Sakichi Toyoda was something of a dreamer and prone to exaggeration and the Self-Help book, filled with its stories of people like Richard Arkwright, captured his imagination. He dreamed of building an island in the middle of the Pacific and of damming a river to create hydroelectricity (Kaneko et al., 2021). According to one account (later discredited) he visited a primary school whilst helping his father and heard a class discussing Self-Help. He borrowed the book from the teacher (Takehara and Hasegawa, 2020). What is sure is that the book was highly influential in the formative years with his copy of the Japanese version displayed at his house which is now a museum, see Figure 1 (Toyota Global, 2026) ^[3].

Driven by his own curiosity, and influenced by Self-Help and his Nichiren Buddhist religion, Sakichi started an evening study group every night made up largely of young people where they read (expensive) newspapers and debated the situation in society (Takehara and Hasegawa, 2020; Kaneko et al., 2021). Around the age of 18, his mind turned to invention, creativity, rationality and efficiency. In this he was particularly inspired by the work of James Hargeaves that he read about in Self-Help (Takehara and Hasegawa, 2020). Hargreaves developed a multi-spinning machine (spinning jenny) and patented it. Hargreaves was also from a poor carpenter family. The Patent Monopoly Act came in in Japan in 1885 thus protecting inventions from this date.

His mother later helped him hide his inventions, which were built in a neighbours shed, and protected him from his ranting father who thought he was getting into debt and wasting his life. Apart from his parents, he was spurred by the stories in Self-Help and to the aim of helping society and women like his mother and grandmother (Liker, 2020). He also wanted more from his own life and was inspired by the words of Smiles who spoke about people like him who, “by dint of persevering application and energy, have raised themselves from the humblest ranks of industry to eminent positions of usefulness and influence in society” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 11).

He was already inventing while at home. For example, if you visit his childhood home you will see it is up on a hill far from water. So Sakichi invented a water reclamation system to provide water for the house. In the attic you can see hand-written drawings of looms which he then built by hand with the carpenter skills he learned from his father. The craft spirit and the belief in the value of being able to work with your own hands is still part of the culture of Toyota today – which emphasises the spirit of being practical, yet creative and the importance of making things (TCMIT.org, 2026).

His most productive years came after he left home, producing a significant number of inventions with over 40 patents including an improved handloom in 1891, which could be used with one hand and increased efficiency by 40%–50% (Toyota Industries Corporation, 2026). This was before electricity, so he developed a wooden chute such that a shuttle of thread could be moved back and forth by gravity through foot pedals. Nowadays you continue to see karakuri devices throughout Toyota plants that move materials into place using gravity. Not only did his foot pedal device help other people and society but it improved efficiency and reduced wasted time and increased human potential. One can imagine the inspiration he got from Smiles (1987, pp. 17): “lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever”.

The type of work that was inspired by Self-Help, was hands-on, “the experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom” (Smiles, 1897, 160). And Smiles presaged the philosophy of continuous improvement in small steps on the way to a dream: “progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 53); with many setbacks, particularly in making his inventions a commercial success.

Central to the philosophy of Toyota is learning not only from success, but failure. Every idea is to be tested as an experiment and through observation and reflection, like a scientist, we move progressively towards our goal. Smiles wrote, “we learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 160).

It was through observing weak points that Sakichi, step-by-step, evolved his invention towards his dream of a fully automated loom. He grew his business from inventing looms to using the looms to make cloth at Toyota Automatic Loom works. After developing a metal loom powered by steam engine technology, he observed that workers had to be stationed by each loom. Much of the cotton fibres they were using came from China and the quality was inferior to the more expensive materials in Japan. Thus, threads in the weft were prone to breaking which at the high speeds of the power looms would create a good deal of defective material. Sakichi wanted to build-in quality rather than repair defects, and also did not want workers standing by mindlessly watching the looms in case defects should occur. So he developed a device (using mechanical tension followers) for the loom to sense when a single warp or weft thread broke such that it could stop itself. However, this was still not good enough. When a loom stopped itself the worker might not at first notice. So Sakichi developed a simple metal flag that would pop up as red when the loom stopped, thus inventing the andon system.

These developments led to the coinage of the term jidoka (autonomation) or automation with a human touch (Powell et al., 2021). Hence, workers could be respected by moving from jido (自動, literally self-moving) to a humanised jido (自働, literally self-working). Jidoka was designed to prevent defects from occurring, but it was also as much about valuing the time of the team member whose ingenuity should not be wasted simply monitoring equipment. From one-man-one-machine, the jidoka device enables one employee to oversee more than 12 machines simultaneously. By freeing the person from the machine, it also allowed the worker to become a problem solver, not a machine watcher. Sakichi’s great nephew, Eiji Toyoda, would later become president of Toyota Motor Company and say:

Decades of kaizen, making the loom more-and-more automatic, culminated in Sakichi Toyoda’s most famous invention, the fully automated Type G Automatic Loom – in 1924. At that time the largest producer of looms in the world were the Platt Brothers in England. The story goes that they purchased the rights to produce the Type G Automatic Loom for about 100,000 pounds sterling which helped provide Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro, with the capital required to establish the Toyota Motor Company.

The Type G was the last major invention of Sakichi Toyoda’s career and he reflected, “I thank heaven for where I am today. That’s why it’s reasonable to want to serve society…(and) make what we say come about” (quoted in Kaneko et al., 2021, pp. 68).

In the spirit of Self-Help, Sakichi expected his son Kiichiro to follow in his footsteps, not to continue to improve looms, but rather to do something great for society. After seeing how advanced automobiles were in the US and the UK, Kiichiro Toyoda chose to create a Japanese auto maker to contribute to the industrialisation of Japan.

The traditional way of learning in Japan, and at Toyota, is on-the-job and through verbal communication, thus slow, incremental and deliberate. This type of tacit learning is quite different than the explicit learning more common in the west (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). The Toyota style is more similar to the guilds and apprentice system found in Smiles’ day: “wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance and industry” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 154).

As a result, Sakichi Toyoda’s philosophy was not written down until 1935. It was recorded by his sons Kiichiro and Rizaburo on the fifth anniversary of his death (Profiroiu et al., 2020). Called The Toyota Precepts, these words are still taught throughout Toyota globally. They are prominently featured on posters, in presentations, and on Toyota’s website ^[4]. We have attempted to map specific quotes from Self-Help to the five Toyota precepts, imagining how Sakichi may have been inspired (see Figure 2). However, we believe that the fifth point of the philosophy was probably influenced more by his religious upbringing than by Self-Help. These five precepts have been a vital philosophy, even today, in guiding Toyota employees on values and expected behaviour.

However, when the company became global, it needed to capture the philosophy to be shared in a more explicit way. This codification was achieved by Fujio Cho who, before becoming the President and CEO of Toyota, was President of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. While at Georgetown, he found that the American ethos was too focused on celebrating success rather than looking for problems to solve and living the Toyota philosophy (Magee, 2007). Fujio Cho was well-versed in this philosophy and the writings of Samuel Smiles and believed in conservatism, humility and never covering up one’s mistakes. The new approach shown in Figure 3 was called The Toyota Way 2001 (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2003).

The Toyota Way 2001 was brought to the wider world’s attention through the book “The Toyota Way” (Liker, 2004). This was the first time that Toyota’s approach had been presented other than as a manufacturing system epitomised by the Toyota Production System (TPS) which was largely developed by Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda from 1948 to 1975 (Monden, 1983). However, TPS was founded upon the philosophy of Toyota and indeed would only work in a meaningful and sustainable way with the Toyota Philosophy underpinning it. Hence, the need to codify The Toyota Way 2001. Fujio Cho helped articulate TPS’s deeper meaning with the phrase “Thinking People System”, highlighting the vital role of human intellect and initiative in manufacturing excellence.

The Toyota Way 2001 introduces its values and methods through two pillars with 5 elements: Respect for People (Respect and Teamwork) and Continuous Improvement (Challenge, Kaizen and Genchi Genbutsu). While we cannot prove cause and effect, each of these are consistent with principles from the Self-Help book (Figure 4). The pillar of Continuous Improvement has been broadly emulated by companies seeking to engage employees through approaches like suggestion programmes, and more directed efforts though Hoshin Kanri having been brought to the west by the likes of Akao, Imai and Ohno (Akao, 1991; Imai, 1986; Ohno, 1988). The Toyota Way 2001 goes further in arguing true Continuous Improvement depends on the second pillar of Respect for People. It was first introduced to the west in a paper co-authored by Fujio Cho (Sugimori et al., 1977). However, Respect for People was as a concept largely ignored in the west until the principle of Respect Every Individual was introduced by the Shingo Institute in 2008 (Shingo Institute, 2017).

It is central to Smiles’ and Toyota’s approach that people should respect themselves, others they work with and wider society, rather than just making money, “one will never accomplish great things who is constantly asking himself, how much gain will this bring me” (Smiles, 1897, pp. 38). The purpose of Toyota is explicitly to help society (and the customer) and hence a better translation is Respect for Humanity, as the Toyota phrase is 人間性尊重 rather than the more common Japanese corporate phrase of 人間尊重 which does mean Respect for People (Miller, 2017). This distinction is a similar Toyotaism to the change of the word automation to autonomation. This is a clear distinction from firms in the west who more often have a purpose solely of driving profits and making money and automating to eliminate people rather than genuinely help customers, the workers and society at large.

In January 2002, Toyota established the Toyota Institute as a Human Resources Development facility for supporting globalisation particularly of The Toyota Way with Fujio Cho as its first President (Toyota Global, 2026). The first time the approach was depicted in an explicit visual way was in 2016 at Toyota Motors Manufacturing UK plant at Burnaston, where the Human Resource Development approach was displayed in the dojo obeya (training room for collaborative strategy and execution) as a 30 m × 2 m board used to help teach leaders and managers (Toyota Manufacturing UK, 2025). This visual approach was produced after one of the site directors asked what a perfect process of Human Resource Development looked like. This has been both been emulated by other Toyota plants and continually updated and modified especially with the revised Toyota Way 2020 (Toyota, 2020) and its slightly revised set of principles which still hold true to the legacy of Sakichi Toyoda and his influence from Self-Help:

• Act for others.

• Work with integrity.

• Drive curiosity.

• Observe thoroughly.

• Get better and better.

• Continue the quest for improvement.

• Create room to grow.

• Welcome competition.

• Show respect for people.

• Thank people.

Toyota is indeed a unique company with a strong and consistent culture. While the culture was born in Japan it has since spread globally taking on different shades of meaning in different countries. Yet, the core principles have survived for over a century, and in this paper, we have traced a direct line of many of Toyoda’s principles to Samuel Smiles’ book Self-Help. We have argued that this global best seller had a major influence on Sakichi Toyoda and the creation of The Toyota Way. We believe this has had an indirect impact on the Toyota Production System and the self-improvement movement and even preluded growth and inward mindset.

Toyota is widely regarded as the role model for Lean (Womack et al., 1990; Yamamoto et al., 2019; Toyota Manufacturing UK, 2025). However, certainly in the early years, Lean was seen as a technical approach and generally referred to as Lean Production (Womack et al., 1990; Holweg, 2007; Roser, 2016), a copy of the Toyota Production System. This was due to our misunderstanding of what we, as western observers, were seeing. As we noted above, it was not until the publication of the book “The Toyota Way” (Liker, 2004) that the wider, respect-for-people aspect was acknowledged.

Now many commentators, both inside Toyota and out, see this as central to the success of Toyota. Pete Gittens, VP HR, Toyota North America states, “if there is magic to TPS, then this is it: successful implementation of human resource philosophies that create the buy-in and engagement of the people necessary to run such a simple but intricate system…It requires a level of patience, a long-term view, a focus on process, and the ability to understand where the individual is in his or her development (Liker and Hoseus, 2008, pp. xii-xiii). David Magee (2007, pp. 8) also comments, “the secret to Toyota’s success.(is) in how it approaches its business as a whole, with an underlying focus on ‘respect for people’”.

One of the authors spent three months as a guest of Toyota in Japan in the mid-1990s and when asked the secret of Toyota’s success was given almost the identical answer about 50 times, “the rigorous and disciplined application of the Toyota Production System”. It would take many years for him to realise the importance of the first part of the reply. When Lean has been adopted by other organisations outside Toyota it often suffers from a lack of sustainability due to: being interpreted merely as a set of tools (Hines et al., 2004), seeing it as a project rather than a mindset (Liker and Rother, 2011), a lack of appropriate culture (Bhasin, 2012), poor employee involvement (Netland, 2016) and generally being understood as a production system rather than a learning system (Reke, 2024). All of this was caused by us copying Toyota Production System and ignoring The Toyota Way. All of these important failure modes/success factors are safeguarded by the critical features of Toyota’s underlying philosophy, which has clearly been influenced by Smiles’ Self-Help.

The contribution of this piece are twofold. Firstly, we have added to the genealogy of Lean by adding a major influence of Sakichi Toyoda and consequently The Toyota Way. Secondly, Self-Help is particularly important in the conceptualisation of Respect for People and the difference that Toyota has from other Japanese companies in that this is really a Respect for Humanity, as autonomation is different from automation. This is of contemporary importance as the Lean and Industry 5.0 community searches for human-centric solution to current day problems.

Our conclusions are based on our interpretation of the historical evidence both from Toyota sources as well as outside observers. We show very strong correlation between Self-Help and what Toyota has done, although we do not claim empirical evidence for causation as this paper was written over 150 years after the publication of Self-Help in Japanese.

As future work, it would be of interest to consider: how do wider moral and literary ideals from previous periods structure managerial norms and organisational learning in Japanese firms today; why did Self-Help have a greater influence on Japan and Toyota in particular, than in other countries and could Self-Help be considered as a proto-management theory about the moral purpose of work. In addition, further research might consider other aspect of the Toyota approach such as the Toyota Production System, and consider how Japanese (or not) it really is. If it is less Japanese than in other Japanese firms such research might discuss the implications of this on its global spread.

So, is Self-Help the book that changed the world? We will leave the reader to decide; however, it has certainly had a profound impact on Toyota.