Thank you to Babson for inviting me here today.
President Healey, Chair Capozzi, Provost Rice, Dean Rollag, members of the governing boards, parents, spouses, friends, and babies, and my fellow graduates, it is my extreme honor to speak to you today
at Babson College celebrate its hundredth anniversary.
And may I be among the first to congratulate this very special class of 2019.
So let me get right to the point.
I know that some of you may be sitting there stressed out about where you will work after graduation.
You may be wondering what company will offer your job.
Well let me take the worry off the table for you right now and offer each and every one of you a job at Toyota!
I haven't actually cleared that with my HR department yet but I'm sure we will be ok.
So now that the employment issue has been solved, let's talk about more important things.
Like how you plan to celebrate this momentous occasion.
I mean how wild is tonight's party going to get?
And, more importantly, can I come?
But I can stay out too late because tomorrow is a finale of Game of Thrones.
I have to tell you.
When I was at Babson, I had no social life.
For me taking classes in English was a real challenge.
It took all of my focus and free time.
I never went to parties.
I never went to hockey games.
I just went from my dorm, to class, to the library, to my dorm, to class, to the library.
So when I attended Babson I was, in a word, boring.
But once I graduated, I went to work in New York where I immediately made up for lost time and became the king of the night.
Now I'm not suggesting you do the same.
I can tell just by looking at you that none of you are boring.
I'm sure you have enjoyed a very active social life while you were here.
But since I'm here to offer you words of advice, let the first be this: don't be boring.
Have fun.
Really figure out what makes you happy in life.
What brings you joy.
When I was a student here, I found the joy in donuts.
American donuts were a joyful, astonishing discovery.
I want to encourage all of you to find your own donut.
Find what makes you happy and don't let go.
You should know I didn't come here to tell you the usual stories about the mountains you may have to climb, or the challenges you'll have to meet.
No!
Because I think we should just go ahead and assume everything is going to work out great!
I think all of you are going to be a big success.
I really do.
And that's where it gets tricky.
Because you are going to be successful.
You are going to climb that ladder and make that money.
But will it be be doing something that is fun?
Something that you really love?
Because when you are as talented as I know all of you are, it it is so easy to wake up one day and find yourself in golden handcuffs with a mortgage
and three kids that you need to put through Babson.
So whether you are entering a family business or not, now's the time to figure out what speaks to your heart the most.
The beginning of your career is really the best part, because you have the freedom to try different things before the inevitable responsibilities of life pile up.
So use this time, this freedom, that your youth provides to find your happy world.
And don't be afraid if it's not what's expected.
I am lucky in some respects because I knew what I wanted to do at a very early age.
when I was a little boy I knew for sure that I wanted to be a taxi driver.
It didn't completely work out, but it's pretty close.
I get to drive cars, and be around cars, all the time.
And if there's one thing I love more than donuts, its cars.
Toyota been building cars for over 80 years now, but we actually started out in the weaving loom business.
My great grandfather invented the automatic weaving loom.
But it was my grandfather, Kiichiro, who took us from making fabric, to making cars, and created the company we have today.
I'm actually the third generation Toyota to run our company, and perhaps you have heard the saying the third generation knows no hardship, or the third generation ruins everything.
Well hopefully that will not be the case I mean I did graduate from Babson after all.
As luck would have it though, as soon as I became CEO we had we had the Great Recession, an earthquake, and tsunami, and a recall that meant I had to testify
to Congress in Washington DC.
At that moment I really did want to take a job as a taxi driver!
But I'm happy to say we were doing fine now, partly because I use what I learned here at Babson every day at Toyota.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of all was the sense of enterpreneurship that was instilled in me here.
Even with a company as big as Toyota, I still try to think of it as a startup company.
In fact, one of the challenges of running the business that's been your family for decades is how willing are you to make dramatic change when it's called for?
How do you look at things objectively and not hang on to something for sentimental reasons?
How do you take the risk of making fabric one day, and cars the next?
Our industry is undergoing revolutionary change today, as are are many others.
Even I can't predict what kind of cars we will be driving 20 years from now.
But my time at Babson taught me to embrace change rather than run from it, and I urge all of you to do the same.
I'm often asked whether I am burdened by having the name Toyota, and when I was your age I might have said yes.
But today I'm very proud of what the name represents.
And a hundreds of thousands people it supports around the world.
So let's fast forward and assume you have become successful doing what you really love.
Now let me give you some advice from one CEO to another: Don't screw it up.
Don't take it for granted.
Do the right thing.
Because if you do the right thing, the money will follow.
Try new things even if you're old.
When I became CEO of Toyota 10 years ago, I was told by one of my mentors that I couldn't expect to be taken seriously by our engineers unless I really knew
how to drive at the highest level.
So at the age of 52, I took on the challenge of training to become a master driver.
Not just so I could drive a racecar, which I do, much to my father dismay.
But so I could communicate how I think our cars should drive with our engineers.
The point is you've always got to be learning something new, no matter how old you are.
Never give up being a student, because being a student is the best job you will ever have.
Find people that inspire you: Oprah, Yoda, Tom Brady, your parents, your friends.
Feed off their energy.
Be a person that inspires others.
Be a good global citizen.
Care about the environment, the planet, about what's happening in other parts of the world.
Don't worry about being cool.
Be warm.
Decide what you stand for.
At Toyota, we have a set of values that include: integrity, humility, and respect for others.
We call it the Toyota Way, and it gives a company a north star, a guiding light.
Find your own guiding light and let it inform every decision you make.
Let it help you make the world a better place.
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow students, today is where it ends and today is where it all begins.
In Japan, every time a new emperor ascends to the throne, a new era begins.
And the calendar starts over at year one.
We just had a new era began in Japan on May 1st.
Every era has its own name and this one is called Reiwa, which means "beautiful harmony."
In many respects all of you are beginning a new era of your own.
Where the clock is set back to one, and the possibilities are endless.
I hope you era is one filled with beautiful harmony, much success, and many, many donuts.
Thank you very much.
