loftwork Project Guidance
Open Innovation Usage Guideline - Creating Viewpoints - Value Discovery -
Case: Yamaha Corporation

In the first half, producer Matsui Creation explained about ‘creation of new value for the company’ tackled by loftwork. At the beginning, redefining that innovation tackled by loftwork is not a purpose, but a process for creating new value .

“Innovation will be effective at the moment when a company rapidly makes a leap forward to create new value, if it is compared to the theory of evolution, it will have a role close to the detonator of the mutation.”

I mentioned the point of open innovation (co-creation) as one means to create new value.

Open innovation is an initiative that large enterprises collaborate with external startups and creators to flexibly bring know-how and human resources back and forth and accelerate innovation. Specifically, necessary measures are 13 items shown in the figure below.

The most important of them is the way the community is located. “It is necessary to think about what should be the community image to make with the partner who wants to collaborate.The co-creation in Hackason recently is quite exciting, but often the means tend to be purposeful, for what There are cases that are not clear, “Matsui pointed out.

In order to create a sustainable business entity, from incubation to community creation, transmission to the outside, it is essential to make people and information-circulating ecosystem function. Loftwork utilizes the award to promote open innovation and create high-value products and impacts ahead of it.

Matsui will continue to explain the value of the award to case studies of co-creative projects working with Yamaha. The effect expected by utilizing the award for open innovation is the following three.

Over the two years from 2014 to 2015, Loftwork conducted “Play-a-thon (Play-a-son)” which fused Hackasson and the performance experience with Yamaha on the theme of “Designing a new performance experience.”
In Play-a-thon, prototyping was advanced with a problem-solving approach based on design thinking.

However, issues such as skills of users and technologies precede, problems such as weak point of view necessary for creation of new value, such as “what to make for?” And “what kind of impact can be left to society” are clarified It was.

Against this backdrop, the new project that we addressed in 2016 created a point of view (POV) called “Why does Yamaha tackle co-creation?” Necessary for the impact on society and culture and creation of new value Set value discovery as a challenge point.

Furthermore, we propose Yamaha collaboration with the global award “YouFab Global Creative Awards (YouFab)” organized by FabCafe. As a concrete measure, we established the Yamaha Special Award to recruit free concepts (social questions) and work expressions that are not bound by existing values ​​from around the world.

YouFab is promoting the award in the following four phases.

Mr. Noriyuki Hata of Yamaha Corporation and Mariko Suzuki of Loftwork are in the second half. I explained about Yamaha’s open innovation strategy and the joint project with YouFab.

It was Mr. Yamaha’s field that first entered. Since joining Yamaha, he experienced the department of electronic musical instruments for nearly 10 years, he has been working on a new business for 15 years. In recent years, incorporating design thinking along with Mr. Yasufumi Kamiya (currently absent from abroad to study), we have created an intreplenner platform within the company and has been promoting co-war with the outside. But eventually I feel the limit.

“Design thinking is a solution type approach to solving every problem of people, but Yamaha is not originally a problem-solving company, but rather like the art, I do not know the moment I saw, but I thought that I wanted I thought that it might be good to make things that shake my emotions, so I did a challenge that incorporates art thought that approaches from the future a bit more than design thoughts starting from user’s tasks, ” I talked about the challenges felt from practice and the background of collaboration with YouFab.

YouFab Yamaha Special Award “Emotion Switch” What?

Next, YouFab director Suzuki outlines the award “As YouFab awards creativity and possibilities across Digital (Information World) and Physical (Material World) as a global award, works from around the world using the FabCafe network We are recruiting. ”

Loftwork set three goals of collaboration between YouFab and Yamaha, following the thought of Mr. Hata who wanted to create a new co-creation platform, not a solution-type approach.

• To uncover new value creation seeds (questions) that are difficult to create with Yamaha alone through co-creation platforms
• Acquiring future business partners through collaboration with creative clusters aiming for social value creation
• To discover ideas and talents that lead to incubation / acceleration of new business from within and outside the company

The recruitment theme for YouFab 2016 “Yamaha Award” is “Emotion’s Switch”. It is an attempt to express the moment when the heart moves as a work, with the core concept that also leads to Yamaha’s slogan “Create inspiration, Together,” and the moment of shaking the heart of men is called “switch”.

This concept was shared throughout the world through FabCafe ‘s global base, resulting in 147 works gathered from 27 countries. I won the Yamaha Award from among them OTON GLASS “OTON GLASS” glasses that support dyslexic people by reading the letters.

Yamaha also developed a prototype of “emoglass” on its own as an answer work for OTON GLASS, which the company selected as a Yamaha prize, and collaboration between a company and a creator in a new form realized that both works gave inspiration .

Through this series of collaborations, Mr. Hata said, “The primary thing in open innovation is the first promise or definition of what to do for, and the” person “who stands in the middle of the project is important. Moreover, that person should not be a person who is just assigned, but should have a vision of originally wanting to realize such a world. If such a person is not at the start, new value can not be created. In other words, rather than an idea, I think that it is very important to find “people” and to work together. “

In the Q & A session held at the end of the guidance, discussions on issues that many of the people who experienced the department involved in the new business collided were discussed.

Q: How do I get an understanding of my boss and management from new projects and business plans?

A: About Ms. Hata, “About how to communicate, Mr. Katayama says,” Since the idea like design thinking is based on a problem-solving approach, actually it is acceptable for the above generation, but it is a venture company When it comes to making a platform for investing in new business or creating investment in business, it will be impossible to judge so easily as the management side is also prepared. ”

Matsui comments that the approach to take depends on the standing position where the boss is placed. “Organizations have creative bosses who have to take risks and conservative bosses who have to keep risks away.It is important to judge from which position your superior is looking at. For people of the system, I think it is also important to communicate what kind of creativity the business can have. ”

Q: How do you guarantee the quality when creating a new business from the recruited idea?

A: Mr. Hata gave a comment that the choosing side should keep the subjective judgment axis aside aside. “First of all, we need to see the user’s response to the idea that we gathered, and even though we think it is not good at the beginning, as we improve our user interview several times it will improve its value, so at the time of entry I can not, I think that the organizer properly gives up the idea, which will improve the quality. ”

Adjustment with the inside and outside of the company is important in order to make new business succeed, including open innovation. In doing so, concrete examples should be materials for good consideration. Learning in this guidance is expected to help create new value at each site.

Open innovation has attracted attention and early years. Many companies introduce them as a methodology for creating new value, practice new departments and new projects. Recently, there are increasing cases that leave certain achievements and impacts.

Meanwhile, project processes incorporating open innovation are required to have different perspectives, perspectives, know-how and knowledge from the conventional business development and research processes. Therefore, even though many staff still understand conceptually, it seems that there are many difficulties at the practical stage in many cases.

For example,

• How can we gather new perspectives that lead to the discovery of new areas?
• How can we design a mechanism that creates ideas beyond imagination
• It seems that discovery of perspectives leading to new value and continuity are particularly likely to be a problem, such as how to keep on going to transient projects and continuing to lead to results.

So, this time we will introduce the projects that Loftwork has been working on, utilizing open innovation. As a guest, Mr. Hata of Yamaha Corporation, which Loftwork supported the creation of new business, attended. How can we make a project that gets more output than expected in a limited time? Hakkuson used to discover more new perspectives and how to cooperate with global co-creation platform. We will explode with each step, along with the actual project members, such as creating a mechanism to raise the strength of the whole project.