Media and public are fascinated with the clash between Tesla the upstart evangelizing zero emission technology and Detroit legacy carmakers peddling internal combustion engines. This paper examines the battle not only from a metric standpoint of production numbers, but, primarily from a systems theory standpoint and will frame this as a war with three battlefields: a battle between mechanical management/organic management; secondly, a battle between environments of stable markets and of dynamic markets; and, thirdly, as a battle between analog product and digital platform product. Market place data shows Tesla is a Deming, organic organization producing digital products whereas Detroit legacy carmakers are mechanical organizations producing mechanical products. This is a rerun of a market showdown where Deming, organic Silicon Valley organizations beat Japanese Deming mechanical organizations in computers in the early 1980s, which was a rerun of Japanese mechanical Deming organizations beating Detroit mechanical organizations in the 1970s.

Speaker: James A. Curiel

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2021)

• Date of Conference: 22-24 November 2021
• DOI: 10.20533/LICE.2021.0004
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-42-6
• Conference Location: Virtual (London, UK)