Oak, pine, and maple purchased at Lowe’s, books, refrigerator, energy drinks, acoustic tiles, fluorescent lighting, car jacks, tatami mats, print advertisement
"In 2011, Lowe's, a publicly traded American chain of home improvement stores adopted the corporate slogan Never Stop Improving. This idea of perpetual improvement is neither new nor American. The Japanese word Kaizen most closely parallels the phrase, meaning 'good change’. Japanese carpenters employed Kaizen when building chashitsu teahouses yet the American “DIY culture” sold by big-box stores like Lowe’s is far removed from the slow, ritual craft that Kaizen dictates.
In 1986 Masaaki Imai published Kaizen: The Key To Japan's Competitive Success. It immediately became an essential text for western corporations looking to overhaul bloated management architecture with lean Japanese methods. Similar to the way that Sun Tzu’s Art of War unintentionally became a manual for capitalist corporate strategy, hundreds of business books advertising “Kaizen techniques” were published in the U.S. through the 1980’s and 90’s.
These Americanized eastern philosophies are now applied to western businesses through karate team-building, mandatory yoga breaks and plastic Bonsai. Instead of a teapot, the young American tech startup of today is equipped with a refrigerator stocked with green tea flavored energy drinks.”
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