“Here they tend here to take the cookie cutter and cut the same cookie. It’s a good cookie, I mean once they get the design right its great and I think, as I said, that’s why their products are so great. Because once they design it, it’s designed with that reliability built in. They know how to make the same copy again and again and again. If it was Spain there would be somebody cutting a corner somewhere thinking that they could actually do it quicker. And that introduces some variability which results in difficulties or bad quality.”

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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
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