Business · Philosophy
Plato the Philosopher, Plato the Consultant
Eleven Dialogues, Eleven Decisions in the Car Industry
Jaime Pérez-Caballero Gallego
What would Plato have said if he had been hired as a consultant? Eleven real decisions from Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Tesla and others, read through his dialogues.
Synopsis
In 2010 Toyota appears before the United States Congress. In 2006 a department at Volkswagen decides how to beat an emissions limit it cannot meet. In 2002 General Motors takes the best electric car anybody had built off the road. In 2017 Tesla discovers that its factory of the future cannot make a Model 3.
Eleven real decisions from the car industry, documented one by one and read through the texts of Plato that explain them best.
The consultant is not always hired. In some cases he is listened to, in others rejected, in one he is called too late and in another he gets up from the table. That is where the book earns its keep: when the advice is not taken, the outcome works as a test of the diagnosis.
Each chapter ends with a protocol and a set of questions the reader can take back to their own company.
Each chapter, in three parts
- The work as it isPlato’s dialogue in a few pages and without scholarly apparatus.
- Plato as consultantWorking with the executive who took the decision, in declared fiction built on real facts and real quotations.
- What actually happenedUntouched, so that nothing is made to fit.
The eleven cases
Chapters
- 1The Man Who Lost His TrialApology of Socrates · Toyoda before Congress, 2010
- 2The Friend Who Comes to HelpCrito · Volkswagen and the EA 189 engine
- 3The Basket of EggsRepublic V and X · Citroën and the 2CV
- 4The Slave Boy Who Knew GeometryMeno · NUMMI, Fremont
- 5The One Who Comes BackRepublic VII · General Motors and the EV1
- 6The King and the InventorPhaedrus · Tesla and the Model 3 factory
- 7The Sons of PericlesProtagoras · Ford against Honda
- 8Begetting in BeautySymposium · Robert Bosch and his foundation
- 9The City in Large LettersRepublic II-IV · Highland Park and the five dollars
- 10Twenty MinutesRepublic and Laws · Nissan after Ghosn
- 11The Debt to AsclepiusPhaedo · Saab Automobile
