The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 3 - The Asian Cars Edition
Horace Dediu, current fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (b) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla, Uber and Apple. In the last and final part of the trilogy, Horace discussed the Japanese automotive industry, and provided interesting insights into how Japanese car culture contrasts against the European and US counterparts. Using the innovator’s stopwatch framework, Horace explained the challenges on how Tesla, Google, Uber and Amazon could disrupt the car industry, and provide some thoughts on what approach Apple might take on creating the car if they are doing it.
Here are the interesting notes and links to the discussion:
- Horace Dediu (@Asymco) and his main site: Asymco.com and do check out Horace’s two podcasts: The Critical Path and Asymcar which we highly recommend. For this episode, do check out Asymcar, where Horace has discussed his thoughts on the European and US automotive industry. Also check out the episode on the Critical Path episode 146: Bob Moesta where Horace applied the “jobs to be done” technique in his analysis across the past two episodes.
- Automotive industry – Japanese cars and the other Asian cars
- Horace discussed his perspective on Japanese automotive industry, and how it contrasted against the European and US car makers.
- While most European and US brands have built a significant brand equity on their cars, very few Japanese cars do not exhibit unique brand identity only until recently with the Toyota Prius, Lexus and Nissan GT-R, .
- European and US brands are now re-imagining and re-designing their old brands contrary to Japanese car brands who usually customise and adapted their cars to the local environments. Toyota has many brands ( and sub-brands in US and European markets. Examples discussed: Toyota Scion, Toyota Mirai – hydrogen fuel cell car. See this interesting link.
- Quick thoughts on Nissan GT-R.
- Drawing an interesting brand analogue for Toyota similar to Samsung as Porsche similar to Apple, where the brands are known for their mass customisation and design respectively.
- Japanese cars have very short shelf life as compared to European and US counterparts due to the regulation, where it opens up an cottage industry where amateurs can retro-fit new engines into their cars.
- In his observation about the car industry, cars in Asia are considered a nationalistic industry where the country has built a car to signify its coming of age: Tata Nano in India, Hyundai of Korea, Proton in Malaysia and Nissan, Toyota & Honda in Japan, do you see China building its own cars and where does the Asian car industry move as a whole in the global market?
- Horace discussed his perspective on Japanese automotive industry, and how it contrasted against the European and US car makers.
- Disrupting the car industry
- The Innovator’s Stopwatch framework: Part One and Two
- The Entrant’s Guide to the Automotive Industry.
- Check out also Asymcar episodes 16: Do the numbers add up? Fuel cells vs Batteries, 18: Cars of the People, episode 22: The Goddess,
- How the car industry can be disrupted: (a) Tesla and Toyota on the battery and engine of the car, (b) Google, Uber, Amazon and even Facebook using software in the form of an app and (c) Apple using a full stacked approach similar to the iPhone.
Also worth listening on Analyse Asia: the Part 1 and Part 2 of the Asymco Trilogy where Horace has covered topics on new market disruption, Apple in China and the luxury market.
Podcast Information:
The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) and Linkcious (and check out their other product, Chiibi).
