Why Change is Good: ITI Welcomes Toyota, an ICT Enabled Company

ITI is excited to expand our defined membership criteria to “ICT Enabled” companies and welcome Toyota to our ranks.  ICT Enabled means companies that are at the forefront of researching, developing, and substantially integrating the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to enable innovative products and services. These companies, on the surface may seem different, but in reality fit well with the existing iconic and innovative brands that make up our membership.  Toyota is the first to join us in that subtle shift, and is further affirmation of our commitment to evolve and embrace the future.

We are at the precipice of an emerging renaissance that has the potential to be the next industrial revolution.  That revolution is increasingly being driven by the intersecting industries that occupy the innovation ecosystem: extraordinary improvements in computing technology, global connectivity, and analytical capabilities, combined with increasingly miniaturized and powerful mobile platforms, including the car, are enabling a new phase in the IT revolution that could well dwarf the initial rise of the Internet.  This phase has the potential to be for the 21st century what steam power was for the 18th, electricity for the 19th, and fossil fuels were for the 20th: a vast new natural resource creating enormous wealth and progress.

To ensure that our economy does not become “all potential no production,” it is critical that we work across our comfortable silos to drive policies that enable this revolution.  Welcoming Toyota, and soon other ICT enabled companies, is one aspect of our larger commitment to breaking down barriers with an eye towards catalyzing innovation, driving job creation, and transforming the world for good.