Loftwork appoints Hajime Matsui as Representative Director and CEO

I first heard of Loftwork in 2005, when I read a book that featured its co-founder, Chiaki Hayashi. Seven years later, at 30, I gave up my position and salary at a publicly listed company and applied to Loftwork. It was a small organization, but I saw a future there. My interview with (the other co-founder) Mitsuhiro Suwa felt like it lasted about five minutes. “Down the road, I’d like you to help run the company,” he said. He gave no reason and said nothing more. It was a strange moment. At the time, I took it as a joke, or the kind of flattery companies offer when they hire. Then, recently, that interview picked up again, 14 years later. “Hajime, how about becoming CEO?” I was stunned.

Every one of my 14 years here has felt like starting a company from scratch. Things change constantly, bringing a steady stream of new concepts and challenges. It was an ideal environment for someone who gets bored easily like me, but as a producer, I felt more pressure each year, knowing nothing would start unless I created the work myself. “Wouldn’t I be better off starting my own company?” I asked myself that many times and kept it to myself. Mitsu and Chiaki sensed it, and more than once they approached me about launching an internal venture, founding a subsidiary, or joining the management team. I dodged every offer, saying, “No, there are things I want to do, and should do, inside Loftwork.” This time, it seems, I’ve run out of places to hide.

In 2017, I launched LAYOUT as an internal startup to turn my own ideas into something real. The business handles everything from planning and designing spaces to operating them, and it has created spaces that became groundbreaking milestones for both society and Loftwork, including 100BANCH, SHIBUYA QWS and ComoNe. If I may say so myself, LAYOUT has opened up uncharted territory and stayed profitable for nine consecutive years. What satisfies me most is that I trained successors and built a business base strong enough to keep running without me.

Yet looking back today, I find myself asking what that really amounts to.

These kinds of results are not what I take pride in. The time I spent with colleagues, setting goals and sharing the joy of reaching them, is certainly something I am proud of. But what I most want to take pride in is the very existence of Loftwork.

I don’t know of any other organization that takes human creativity this seriously. Loftwork experiments constantly with how people connect and communicate, and it has never stopped working on one question. How can collective intelligence produce creative solutions and next-generation ways of working? Everyone who works here finds hope in growing personally, in watching the company evolve and in changing society through their own work. As a member of that organization, and of the larger organism that grows beyond its walls, I am still proud today to take part in its collective journey over the past quarter century.

I don’t know yet whether the on-the-ground skills and management experience I built at LAYOUT will translate directly to leading Loftwork. In the quarter-century ahead, there will surely be many moments when simply continuing past ways of working will no longer suffice. Even so, I love Loftwork as a living, working collective, and every day I feel the joy of imagining and creating. If transformation is what it takes to carry this culture and hope into the next quarter-century, then I can no longer run away from leadership. I’ve made up my mind. From here on, I will devote my whole heart and soul to delivering the answer to that five-minute interview.

Like a living thing, Loftwork exists through collaboration with all of you. That means creating places that don’t have names yet, sketching the kinds of worlds people wish existed without limiting itself to one field, and opening up new possibilities for businesses and local communities. Going forward, I hope to shape new horizons together with everyone who finds this side of Loftwork exciting and wants to imagine and create alongside us. Thank you for your continued support of Loftwork, and of me.

Hajime Matsui’s profile page