According to Porter, cost leadership strategy and differentiation strategy are mutually incompatible. However, industry-leading firms such as IBM, Sony, Toyota, and Honda have achieved both cost leadership and differentiation. This study views the integration of generic strategies as occurring through a cyclical process consisting of three stages—vision, planning, and learning—and examines, through cases in the automobile industry, how generic strategies are formulated based on the top management's vision and subsequently integrated through the planning and learning stages. While GM and Ford, which had been frontrunners in the automobile industry, failed to adapt their strategies in response to environmental changes, the primary factor enabling Japanese latecomers Toyota and Honda to achieve both cost leadership and differentiation advantages was their sustained and consistent execution of plans grounded in the top management's firm vision, coupled with their learning efforts to resolve contradictory problems throughout this process.