Collision Course

"We had a lot of issues we wanted to bring to his attention," says Johanna Buurman, 29, the e-commerce team's chief thinker (members of the team invented their own titles for their new business cards; Dames's is "chief dreamer"). "Usually, people are hesitant to go to senior executives without an answer or a fully thought-out plan. But it didn't stop us. Afterwards, the president urged us to talk to the rest of the top executives and take them through the same discussion, the same experience." Once the e-commerce team could boast about conducting sneaker meetings with senior management of the U.S. operation, people at all levels of the company began clamoring for invitations. "We've done hundreds of sneaker meetings by now, with people at Toyota Australia and Toyota Europe, engineers in Japan, dealers, the company's chairman, the board, the CFO -- everyone," says Buurman.

Most of the sneaker meetings are held in the Lab, with its floor-to-ceiling whiteboards and informal atmosphere. One section of wall is papered with newspaper clippings about the digital future, "Dawn of the Online Icebox" and "A Computer Chip in Every Shirt Collar?" among them. There's no conference table, just a random smattering of chairs. "The presentation isn't portable," explains Dames -- most of it exists only on the whiteboards in the Lab. Barbra Cooper observes, "The difference is amazing when you break down the rituals of PowerPoint presentations in the boardroom. They're having a totally different communication experience. It's the fastest way to educate, build awareness, and get Toyota executives to move in the right direction."

The sneaker meeting has no script and only the loosest agenda. Dames, Buurman, and Kanai alternately stand at the front of the room or sit on nearby tables, interrupting one another every few sentences. The scenario feels something like a fifth-grade class project, but the unpredictability of it makes it impossible for participants to zone out. A centerpiece of the meeting is the iceberg diagram, basically a triangle on the whiteboard, with a horizontal line that intersects it a third of the way down from the apex. "Business-to-consumer commerce is only the tip of the iceberg," says Kanai, 26. "Business-to-business commerce is all this stuff below the waterline. Intranets, extranets, connecting dealers, suppliers, affiliates. It's about taking every business process and doing it electronically."

When an attendee asks a question about the technological implications of using the Net to communicate with distributors, Dames is quick to answer. "We've been involved with every major Internet initiative at the company, and technology has never been the problem," he says. Kanai picks up the response. "It's always been about getting people to work differently and redefining business processes. That's the toughest nut to crack."

The sneaker meeting pushes the e-commerce team's agenda of creating global business-to-business and business-to-consumer portals (something they're working on with other groups at Toyota Japan), and it ends by sketching out the team's long-term vision of "the networked person."

"Manufacturers are putting the Web into refrigerators," says Dames, pointing to one of the clippings on the wall. "Qualcomm Inc. has just come out with the pdQ Smartphone, which combines a PalmPilot and a cell-phone." "Why not have the Net in the car?" Kanai cuts in. "Engineers already put global-positioning systems in the car, or diagnostic computers. Now, they're starting to think about two-way communications." Several of the attendees have quizzical looks on their faces. Richard Kanno, 30, chief artist (and the quietest member of the team), sits down in front of the plasma screen, dons a headset, and begins to demonstrate My Car Universe.

My Car Universe, a prototype 3-D Web site, began last year as Project Revelation, a partnership between Toyota, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Spike Australia, a design agency. "Project Revelation was like an auto-industry clay model," says Buurman, a native of the Netherlands who commands tremendous respect from her teammates, in part because she put herself through business school by driving an 18-wheeler. "It helps you envision the future, and like a clay model, you can reshape it as you go, or break it up when you're done with it." Project Revelation was completed in just two months, and My Car Universe debuted in February 1999, at the launch of Intel's Pentium III processor.

Kanno boots up My Car Universe, and the computer starts talking, informing him that his brake pads are low. It asks if he wants to book service now at his Toyota dealership; he says he will book it later. In another demo, the car notifies him that concert tickets for a band that he likes are going on sale, offers to plan a route to buy tickets, informs him that he'll need gas, and shows him where he can fill up along the way. Yet another module can broadcast a range of security messages to a pager or PalmPilot, notifying the owner that someone is lifting the door handle repeatedly, for example. Ideas on the drawing board include real-time traffic data and an MP3-based jukebox.