"Fibona (fibona)" brings about innovation by integrating Shiseido with "external acquaintances."

On the title of "fibona ～Side Story" this time, we invited Yuya Nishimura, the president of Miratsuku, a NPO corporation, to the guest and held an on-line event under the theme of "The role of technology in the creation of intrinsic value that captures trends."

He reports on Mr. Nishimura's lecture and panel discussions with researchers on the importance of catching the tide that Mr. Nishimura experienced through his work at Miratsuku and his work with various people.

Value is created by context rather than by itself

The lecture began with the story of how value would be created in the first place. "Taking a stone as an example, the mere stone was very valuable in the Stone Age, but it once again lost value." Another example of a piano was "a musical instrument originally created 300 years ago when the Medici ordered it, but later it was used in the print telegraph keyboards devised by Christopher Raytham Scholes. The background to this was the launch of a typewriter that was very difficult to use, and the search for a mechanism that was easier to push from the context of "something easy to enter text" was made, and the piano was once again hit by light. The piano gained the flow of PC keyboards in addition to musical instruments."

"In this way, something that was not worth in an era can have value in a new context in different times," Nishimura said. "That is, value is created by the context, and not value itself."

Commonalities between technological evolution and biological evolution

Mr. Nishimura went on to talk about technology and human evolution.
"Monkeys have developed their hands as animals climbing trees, but they gradually came to have things and foods using their hands, and they have evolved by shifting their uses. Human beings have also evolved through the combination of technologies, such as hunting using bones as weapons, and making earthenware using fire."

"This development of technology, when interpreted in conjunction with the idea of evolution in biology, is that the current function of technology is useful in the current environment, and we can find a "destination" for the development of technology by looking at it, what kind of mechanism it is, or what kind of evolution it has achieved," Nishimura said.

The avatar project in ANA was a good example of finding a destination for technological development. From the key question (bottom left), which triggered this project, we reconsidered the avatar's technology as "a technology that moves only a sense to a place where it cannot usually go." Currently, it is becoming independent from a division to an operating company and is starting to develop services.

Questions from the Future of Transforming Technologies into Value

As value comes from the context, Mr. Nishimura says, "The combination of new combinations of technologies, etc., is combined with the context, which leads to valuable innovation." He also noted that the area in which the innovation occurs is an adjacent area between the company's own area and the external area (the new area for the company). It's important to be close to the company's domain and to the context in which it operates in order to leverage its technology (converting its applications). How, then, can it be tailored to the context? Mr. Nishimura went on to discuss future questions to capture the context.

"It's about answering questions from the future and what we should do about future events," Nishimura continued. As an example of practicing by considering what should be done with the present technology for future events, this paper introduces the water supply building corresponding to sea level rise and the rearing of artificial coral reefs.

How then should we imagine future events? "It's hard for people to imagine what they've never seen before, like the birth of cars and planes," Nishimura said. The point here is to change the starting point. Since there is no big difference in each individual's imagination, it is important to change the direction of imagination by changing the starting point. One example of changing the starting point is "knowledge of diagonals." In the case of science, by deepening the understanding of design and engineering, that is to say, the art of people, it is possible to find themes that are sought beyond the times, and that this is an event that will also become a familiar event in the future.

What is the role of technology in the future?

In closing the first half of the meeting, Mr. Nishimura said, "By deepening our understanding of people, we know the questions from the future, and by expanding the possibilities of the future, what we should do next is to determine the extent of execution and feasibility by technology. While the questions from the future and what we should do now are determined by the technology we have now, we have the present by the accumulation of past, and the future is always connected by the behavior of the present. It is important to determine in which area we will create value while having the awareness of it.

The fact that masks and disinfectants have become more valuable in corona calamities is a typical example of value created by contexts, and there seemed to be many cases of turning the eyes outside. In addition, I felt that the role of technology is to determine the range that can be implemented and realized in a number of future possibilities, which conveys the importance of constantly considering what can be done with the technology before developing it.

The role of Shiseido's research in the creation of intrinsic value that captures trends

In the second half, a panel discussion was held from the Shiseido Global Innovation Center to discuss the role of Shiseido's research in value creation, including Akira Takada (top left), Kazuyuki Miyazawa (top right), and fibona member Keiyuki Asahi (bottom right) at the chairman.

When Takada first asked the question, "Although the research site is highly convincing, the theme that is an extension of the existing line tends to be adopted, but how should we tackle it," Mr. Nishimura replied, "If you think about how to use technology without changing it, it tends to be an extension. First of all, it is important to think about how to use it right away."

He continued, "For the sake of persuasion, it is necessary to have some logic to assume the future. However, it is not necessary to consolidate it with logic, and in fact, it is the same as the deduction of the detective in name, and the only way is to have people tell the story and believe it. However, it is difficult to persuade a large number of people by itself, so it is important to think about what the degree of freedom you have and what you can do within it. Rather than spending too much time on explaining persuasion, I think it is important to try what you can do first and communicate what you believe in first, while trying what you can do now."

Next, Miyazawa responded, "While we felt that it was important to ask how to answer the question, it was difficult to think from a technological point of view because we tend to think from a technological point of view. How should we think about it. Mr. Nishimura answered, "It is really important for researchers to do what they like. On the other hand, the combination of research and technology has created the world since the industrial revolution. Because it does not need to be cutting-edge, we can create new things by combining various things."

"It would be important to have a variety of withdrawals on technology and make use of them in one context. However, it would be difficult for researchers to ask them to start and use technology, so it would be important for researchers to devote themselves to getting a withdrawal on technology and to divide their roles, such as by having a different person think about withdrawal and utilization."

Furthermore, Miyazawa responded that "Shiseido laboratories think that it is easier to imagine a practicable area than the marketing department because they know the technological seeds because the areas in which they are specialized differ depending on the division. However, Mr. Nishimura answered that "the laboratories have the impression that they are obtaining and responding to requests from the marketing department, that is, they tend to be asked for R&D to fill the pieces. It is important as a company, but I feel that it is not worthwhile to end the activities. There may be some researchers who lose their motivation when they all become so. I think that it is more essential to see the essence, so it is important to work together with activities to fill the pieces."

To generate significant innovation

In the last Q&A session of the event, participants raised a question: Where will major innovations emerge outside of contiguous areas, and if so, is it important to capture the context?

"That's exactly the way it is, and it's in the current context, so it's very easy to understand that it's selling now. But from that point on, the future is in the current context, so the future will be in this way. This is a combination of assumptions and speculations that are supposed to happen. However, it's not a arbitrary guess, but rather a hypothesis based on the current context, so it's increasingly convincing to support that guess." Ms. Nishimura concluded her speech, expressing sympathy with the hard work of researchers, saying, "Even with hypotheses that are in line with that context, it's difficult for people around us to believe."

"The role of technology in the creation of intrinsic value that captures the tide" was a meeting that posed to researchers what questions Shiseido should solve when considering the future context of the world, and what questions we researchers would like to solve. Participants also commented that as a research institute responsible for the technology, they were able to know what kind of future they wanted to create while determining the feasible scope, what they could do now, and the importance of exercising their imagination about what kind of things they would be able to do right now. For each researcher, not only did I feel that this was a good trigger for thinking about questions from the future and thinking about the present, but it was also an event that I strongly felt that I wanted to be a research laboratory that can envision the future together with partners and create new value for the future era.

Mr. Yuya Nishimura's career Born in 1981 in Ikeda City, Osaka Prefecture. Acquired master's degree in Human Science (Human Science) at the Graduate School of Osaka University. After working at a human resources development venture company and the Japan Productivity Center, we established a dialogue BAR in 2008, and in 2011 we established a NPO corporation called Miratsuku. Work on the construction of an innovation platform that transcends sectors, occupations, and domains, as well as support for business creation at about 30 major corporations per year, support for the launch of R&D projects, design of future concepts, and search for future trends. Associate Professor, Innovation Designer, Future Strategy Office, RIKEN, National Research and Development Corporation, Special Professor, Social Solutions Initiative, Osaka University